The End of the Prequels

I have always wanted to add movie reviews to the stuff that I post here. From time to time, I will try to do so. Of course this is granting the fact that a new movie I saw is worth the effort. I like movies but I'm not the type who watches everything. My humble DVD collection however should be enough backlog for me to work on once I muster the will power to do so. I have to admit though that sometimes, I watch something just to get over the curiosity and have been even compelled to see movies simply because they are too "pop culture" to miss like this one... not every damn movie though, at least those that I can actually sit through for the next 2 hours and not revolt in apathy and disgust. I think it is relevant enough to watch pop movies even just to be able to converse about it with friends. Lastly, I am not a professional critic and I do not profess to be one so just bite me if you disagree with anything.

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After much hype and media galore, it has finally come to an end. After seeing Episode 2, I wasn’t really expecting much from Episode 3. It felt almost like a new Microsoft Windows version... there's just too much hype around it that you know it will never be good enough.

Arguably though, this to me is the best of the prequels. Finally, we see some action from all the characters that we expect to. I got pretty pissed off from the very short light saber fight scene that yoda did in Episode 2, didn’t you? Here, we get to see a lot of the light sabers being waved around.

I think the most enjoyable thing about the movie itself is the way you expect it to finally tie all the details together. How the republic finally becomes the Empire, how the Jedis get exiled, the fall of Ani Skywalker, and the birth of Luke and Lea, they even bothered to show Chewbacca just for the heck of it I guess. George Lucas obviously had only 1 more movie left and as far as I'm concerned, he did ok. What I can at least appreciate is the fact that it was at least logical (although, who didn’t know from the very beginning that Palpatine would actually turn out to be the Sith Lord?)

The acting on the other hand was nothing worthy of praise. Hayden Christensen (Ani Skywalker) could really use some acting lessons, and even Natalie Portman (Padme Amidala) lost her previous allure and magnetism. The scenes and dialogues between them lacked the depth that would have made the film's drama more realizable. Ewan McGregor (Obi-Wan) was the only one that was convincing here. He deserves credit for this. The only problem I have with Ewan is whenever I see him on screen, I always remember his role on Trainspotting and it just ruins it for me seeing him be a mentor.. much like I always remember Bill Paxton on True Lies... ha! This one is my problem of course.

There were some details that I thought (among others) weren’t very consistent. Did Ani Skywalker really get that powerful and be able to finish Count Duku in less than 5 minutes? Count Duku was supposed to have been a direct apprentice of Yoda himself and was also the mentor of General Grievous and Quai Gon-Jin. For pete's sake, he sliced off Skywalker's hand the last time they waved their sabers at each other, even Yoda didn’t get to kill him in 5 minutes in Episode 2 and yet it didn’t seem like young Skywalker even broke a sweat.

It also bothered me how they just inserted the droid commander General Grievous into the movie without providing much of a background. It is good I guess that I "accidentally" was able to watch several chapters of the Clone Wars Animation on Cable TV so I knew who he was. What was surprising to me was in the animation chapters, Grievous was portrayed as a very powerful foe of the Jedi's. In fact so powerful that Jedi knights would run and hide to avoid facing him if it was possible. There were also several fight scenes in the animation that showed him taking on multiple Jedi knights all at once and killing them (hence his trophies of light sabers). We see in the movie that he suddenly has this weird cough, and doesn’t seem to be able to walk straight. Did I miss a few more chapters in the Clone Wars? Maybe I did. But I guess I didn’t care enough to find out before I saw the movie.

It was also to disappointing to see Yoda fail the way it was portrayed in the movie. He was supposed to end the rule of the Sith when he fought with Palpatine. Samuel Jackson (Master Windu) fought Palpatine and won, in fact he was about to kill him if it weren’t for Ani's betrayal of the Jedi Code, so what gives with Yoda having a hard time with him and needing to escape?

It also doesn’t sound consistent to Jedi wisdom that Ani would so easily fall prey from Palpatine's traps of being able to possess power over death. But then again, what do I know about Jedis. I just I hope that finally this is the last I hear of the jar jar jokes.