Star Wars: The prequel edition
- “Ladies and gentlemen, you wanted the best, you got the best. The hottest band in the world, KISS!”
I wasn’t planning to do a Star Wars Ep. III post, not because of me, but because I felt nobody would give a crap about it. Me, my bipolarity has come to manifest itself as a complete inability to write anything positive or negative about the new movie. As it is, I’m stuck right in the middle, knowing that it’s a bad movie, but not being able to contain my excitement over watching it again.
(This is part one of a two-post series, which I’ll wrap up sometime this week.)
I have a crazy feeling that Episode III will reveal itself to be just plain bad on repeated viewings. As it stands, yes, it’s the best of the prequels. By far, I might add. It’s also a mighty fine Star Wars movie. It entertains, even as it bludgeons you with such clunkers as “She has lost the will to live” and “Chewbacca, miss you, I will”. But since now, as the emperor would say, “The circle is complete”, we can look at the Star Wars prequels as a whole.
(Flashback alert!)
Does anybody remember way before Episode I hit, what we expected from the prequels? I do:
Alvarete’s top 3 list of expected stuff from the Star Wars Prequels (In no particular order)
- Anaking hooks up with Padme
- Jedis die
- Anakin turns to Vader
There were also a few issues that I wanted fleshed out, like the relationship between Anakin and Obi Wan, the Jedi Council, and, of course, massive light-saber fights. But, if you think about it, the prequels had a relatively small amount of terrain to cover. Plus, we already knew what happened (sort of). We knew who lived and who died, the old adage “It’s about the journey, not the destination” should’ve been the operational motto of the prequels. Instead, let’s sum up Episode I and II:
Alvarete’s top 3 list of key Star Wars plot points explained during Episode I (In no particular order)
- Jedi powers come from midichlorians
- Nothing much happens
- Really, nothing happens
Alvarete’s top 3 list of key Star Wars plot points explained during Episode II (In no particular order)
- Jedi are stupid
- Clones!
- Anakin and Padme like each other
(Oh yeah, spoiler alert. If you haven’t watched the sequels, I just screwed them up for you. Go me!)
Seriously, five hours of combined prequel, and nothing happens. Nothing that couldn’t have been explained during the first half of a movie with reasonably paced storytelling. Instead, we get all these extraneous set pieces that last forever, like a 20-minute pod racing segment. Oh, and Jar-Jar Binks. And midichlorians. And Darth Maul. I’m entertained by the pretty pictures and the ass-kicking, I really am. But the fact is that, fanboy giddiness aside, the prequels reek of poor story-telling, and the rational half of me refuses to mark them as “good movies because they’re Star Wars”. As movies, they are absolutely abysmal, and if I was not a huge Star Wars I would probably just dismiss them as such and move on, but what amounts to salting the wound is how impressive other products based on Star Wars have turned out to be, which points out the strength of the property and Lucas’ failure to let Star Wars be truly great. I’m not a Lucas hater, the man is a brilliant visual stylist, but Empire and Jedi prove that the better Star Wars came when he influenced the result but didn’t direct it. Conversely, he gets a chance to touch up the Original Trilogy, and what does he do? Add song and dance numbers to every freaking film. Make Greedo shoot first. I can’t imagine anybody watching the OT and going “You know, these movies could be great, if only they had more songs sprinkled in…”
In the end, you and I know that the real issue about the prequels wasn’t whether to watch them or not. It was a given, from the day the “Episode I is a go” news spread across the world. One of the reasons I wasn’t too keen on writing about any of them was that they’re Star Wars, and, as such, there’s really no reason to review them. Either you get “it”, or you don’t. I’ve always worn my geek credentials on my sleeve, and I got “it”, the whole enchilada: midichlorians, wooden dialogues, pod races and Frankenstein homages. As of today, I’m not even bitter about what could’ve been.
I’m just glad it’s over.
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