Speaking of which, did anyone see the AJC article on Saturday, with a picture of a woman with a similar outfit? I tried to go find the pic on the AJC site, but couldn't. So I found this one instead.
Posted on 05/16/2005 1:18:49 PM PDT by Destro
Zero Stars For Star Wars VI
May 16, 2005
This column was written by John Podhoretz.
The final Star Wars is, as writer-director George Lucas promised, a tragedy -- but it's not the tragedy Lucas thinks it is.
Ever since he began making his second set of Star Wars movies a decade ago, Lucas said that Episode III: Revenge of the Sith would be the unvarnished story of the young knight Anakin Skywalker's degeneration and conversion into the black-helmeted, black-outfitted Darth Vader, the villain of the first three films. The tale of woe it really tells is that of George Lucas himself, the final chapter in the sad degeneration of a vital, vivid, and highly amusing moviemaker into a dull, solipsistic, and humorless incompetent.
Lucas had more than a quarter of a century to figure out why Anakin Skywalker went bad. And here's what he came up with: Anakin is afraid of losing his wife Padmé in childbirth. Padmé tries to reassure him: "I promise you I won't die in childbirth," she says, offering a touching expression of her faith in the range of health-care services that were available a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. That over-deliberate line of dialogue is typical of Revenge of the Sith, which joins its immediate predecessor Attack of the Clones on a very short list of films that deserve to compete for the Worst Script Ever Written.
"Hold me, Anakin!" Padmé tells her husband. "Hold me like you did by the lake on Naboo!"
No performer living or dead could pronounce the word "Naboo" without sounding like a moron, and Lucas matches that authorial infelicity with dozens of others. One of the movie's villains is named "Dooku," and it's a pity that Lucas didn't arrange for Dooku to visit Naboo, because that could have generated a truly memorable piece of dialogue, like "You should never have come to Naboo, Dooku!"
Later in the film, Vader's mentor Obi-Wan Kenobi tells Padmé that her hubby has murdered some children: "He killed younglings at the Jedi temple!" She storms off and confronts him: "Obi-Wan says you killed younglings!"
Padmé's anger and shock seem a mite surprising, since in Attack of the Clones her then-boyfriend Anakin had told her about another occasion on which he had killed some kids. This is spoken in a soliloquy that suggests what Macbeth might have been like if it had been written by George Lucas: "I killed them! I killed them all! They're dead, every single one of them! And not just the men, but the women and the children, too!! I slaughtered them like animals! I HATE THEM!"
But I digress, because that speech isn't in the film under review -- and there are plenty of other hilarious examples of bad writing on display in Revenge of the Sith.
For example: Obi-Wan uncovers the killing of the younglings by checking out some hidden video at the Jedi Temple. The wise old creature Yoda, who may be the most intelligent person in the universe, but seems to have learned English by reading old Time magazines, warns him: "Obi-Wan, watch the surveillance tapes you should not!"
Yoda has just returned from a diplomatic mission to a planet inhabited by bipedal gorillas because, as he explains in the rounded tones of an opponent of the John Bolton nomination, "Good relations with the Wookiees I have." Later, a defeated Yoda sighs: "Into exile I must go." You half-expect him to be followed by six other dwarves chanting, "Hi ho, hi ho / Into exile we will go . . . "
Anakin is invited to attend the theater as a guest of the president of the republic (a scene that allows Lucas to let us know that the favored form of entertainment in the highly advanced Star Wars galaxy is a Cirque du Soleil show performed inside a blob of translucent Jell-O). The president tells him about the Dark Side of the Force, and how it can be used to bring people back from the dead. Anakin decides he wants in. To which the only possible response is: That's it? The entire universe is thrown out of balance and evil defeats good all because one petulant and whiny guy doesn't want Natalie Portman to buy the farm?
"Dialogue is not my thing," Lucas has said. "I don't like writing, and I don't like scripts." But there is a whole lot more to a script than just the dialogue. There are also small matters such as plot, motivation, and character development. How is it possible that Lucas could have satisfied himself with the notion that the destruction of the galactic democracy and the triumph of evil over good could all have sprung from a single lousy pregnancy? Granted, Mrs. Darth Vader wears some very fetching beaded outfits -- plus, she's a senator just like Hillary Clinton, only decades younger and way better looking. Even so, this is astoundingly thin gruel on which to hang six movies made over a period of 28 years.
Back in 1977, we were told in the original Star Wars that Darth Vader "was seduced by the Dark Side of the Force" -- that Vader had become a villain because he had been consumed by a lust for power, so that he could boss people around, blow up planets, and, generally speaking, control the universe. Like all great villains, the Darth Vader we saw in the first Star Wars actually loved being a bad guy. He enjoyed being able to choke annoying underlings by pinching his thumb and forefinger together. He relished his swordfight with his old mentor Obi-Wan Kenobi. He didn't even mind slicing his own son's hand off (in the second film) just to prove a point.
But the Darth Vader we see at the end of Revenge of the Sith hasn't been seduced. He's been tricked. He's not a villain. He's a schmuck.
And what of George Lucas? He is, by leagues, the most commercially successful moviemaker in history. Forget the billion-plus dollars he has earned from the Star Wars movies. Industrial Light & Magic, the special-effects firm he began with his Star Wars profits, grosses $1 billion per year.
But what happened to the director who made the thrilling mood piece American Graffiti, that deceptively casual account of a bunch of teenagers in a California town in 1962 hanging out on the last summer night before the school year begins? What happened to the guy who revolutionized science fiction by making an outer-space adventure that managed to be cheerful, exciting, and lighthearted?
The tragedy of George Lucas is that he made billions of dollars, and all it did was turn him into a drag.
John Podhoretz is a contributing editor to The Weekly Standard.
If it is as bad as "Phantom Menace," everyone should save their money. That was probably the stupidest, most-boring movie ever.
That faux pas right there disqualifies his review if you ask me.
I thought what got you to the dark side was using your Jedi powers for your own selfish needs. The Force is sort of like the Chinese/Japanese "Chi". In martial arts they teach you not to use your force unless you have to. That you become seduced to the dark side of the Force when you try and and control the force rather than working with the force.
Hilarious, that was. Better than the movie, think I.
It's as though I sense a million souls, all crying out at once,...and then the lines at the cinema disappeared....
Also Star Wars (as was Indiana Jones) is a tribute to 30s and 40s movie westerns and matinee serials - which means simple stories and fast moving adventures.
The last two Star Wars seemed a failure because the bad guys were not clearly defined - what was lacking in the first two Star Wars was a clear black hat wearing villian and it lacked martial combat action.
Also Star Wars (as was Indiana Jones) is a tribute to 30s and 40s movie westerns and matinee serials - which means simple stories and fast moving adventures.
The last two Star Wars seemed a failure because the bad guys were not clearly defined - what was lacking in the first two Star Wars was a clear black hat wearing villian and it lacked death defying action.
Well Anakin/Darth Vader, as a bad guy, isn't clearly defined viewing the whole series a whole.
Speaking of which, did anyone see the AJC article on Saturday, with a picture of a woman with a similar outfit? I tried to go find the pic on the AJC site, but couldn't. So I found this one instead.
"Aren't you a little busty to be a stormtrooper?"
A perfect example of just how generally unimaginative and insular Hollywood has been. You find these incredible movies which are nearly perfect and others which are just embarassingly bad.
In the new one the id would win. An the love affair would be Lesbian. If Lucas is the pinnacle then you can see how far the fall off has been.
It was everything a good sf movie should be. It gave some eye-candy and all, but even more, it sparked the imagination and sense of wonder.
And then we were right back into visible wires and black and white and set backdrops with visible seams, and hokey plots, for another twenty years or so....
Dan
Natalie Portman, hot she is.
George Lucas, wine he makes.
Right. Or you'd have to see the naked swimming scene. FP was great both for what it showed, and for what it only suggested.
Dan
Lucas was quoted recently with..."I'm glad to be leaving this behind" or words to that effect. Maybe he'll do a shark movie next ;)
It was a wonderful movie and grabbed me from the beginning as a 10 or 11 year old in a little Arkansas town. Now it can't even support a movie theater so the people travel to a larger city generally Monroe, La. But when I saw that movie I was flying through space in that saucer and scared crapless. No monster is ever more frightening than the Unseen One.
Another fantastic one. But it was precisely the story which made it great unlike Star Wars. There was not one special effect in it worth the name all psychological development again unlike Star Wars. But that is unimportant to a neo-serialized mythology or serialized neo-mythology which you postulate.
Star Wars has the problem Wagner operas have for me, no humanity of interest. Interesting parts but doesn't hold together like a Spielberg movie.
Yep. I forget, is Dooku a bad guy? At first, I thought he was the only one to sense Palpatine's plan and act to raise an army to counter it, but evidently I missed some nuance that aligned him with the Sith. As you said, not clearly defined. For that matter, the picture of the Old Republic that Lucas presents in Episodes I & II looks more like a bunch of feuding Somali warlords than anything else. It's almost enough to make you cheer for the Empire.
There's something else missing from the prequels, too: *humor*. The Original Trilogy had Han Solo - a non-boring, non-tedious, non-Jedi character. His charm and humor helped balance out the heavy, serious Jedi component.
Now that I think about it Luke Skywalker in teh first Star Wars was kind of a whiny teenager in the first third of the movie but in the end he became a man and had a right of passage. I think I got it! That is why the first two modern moves were so off - because they did not have that growing up baptisim of fire moment from teenager to man that there was in Star Wars. I think that is why the original Star Wars blew up and hooked a generation.
I didn't pay to see the last two Star Wars, and I won't pay to see this one now, either. From what I can tell, the average Star Wars fan these days is about 7 years old, so Lucas revolving the whole deal around childbirth should go over well with his adoring fan base
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