Sparker |
Star Wars III: Better than the last one |
[ May 25, 2005 ] |
It comes to something when the standard response to "what was it like"
is, "Well, it was better than the last one.
I grew up with Star
Wars. I must have been about 10 when I saw the first one (yes,
that would be "Episode IV: Last Hope" for those who buy in to the Lucas
history revision system). I loved it. It was big, loud and,
above all, fun. Many have criticized acting, writing, inability
of men in white suits to shoot and even the fact that a sword is a
really dumb weapon when fighting men with guns, but I loved it.
Then, three years later, came "Empire strikes back", and I still
remember the first scenes of the walkers arriving. This, again,
was special. A little darker, a bit more gritty, but, still,
above all big, loud and fun. Three years later "Return of the
Stupid Furry Bear" arrived. At the time I enjoyed it, but it was
pretty lame by comparison. It also began the great "Lucas
re-engineering process". The crap about Luke and Lea being
siblings was so obviously tacked in it hurt. And there was much
crap dialog, not to mention the stupidly of teddy bears with rocks
beating fully armed and armoured soldiers (and no, I don't want vietnam
comparisons here. There is a remarkable gulf between beleive a
sniper who knows the jungle can wipe out a better supplied battalion of
soldiers and believing a teddy bear with a rock can hurt a man in full
body armour).
At the time "Return" cam out, however, I forgave its stupidly and I
loved it. And when it was over Lucas said "I will never make
another Star Wars film".
So, all those years later, Lucas changed history again, and made
another Star Wars film. For reasons I cannot remember, I did not
expect much. Maybe getting older and revisiting the silliness of
"Return" began to convince me that things would not be good.
Unfortunately I was right. "Episode I : The phantom menace" was a
pile of horse shit. It was not big or loud, and was most
certainly not fun. It did, however, set the bar so low that the
following two films could not be worse.
Which brings us to the sorry state of affairs we have today. The
final film in the series (Lucas says he will never make another Star
Wars film, and we know how reliable he is) has arrived, and we get to
see in all its glory the final stage of the descent of Anikin the
whining kid into a much taller, and far less prone to annoyance Darth
Vader. I won't be seeing it. I didn't bother seeing the
second one. There are so many good films I have never seen, and
so many great films I will probably never see, that I don't feel like
wasting my time on a film that was "Better than the last one".
For some reason it feels too much like the justification for banging
your head against a wall: it feels so good when you stop.
On a final, and not particularly related note, I just bought the new
Garbage album. It is much more like their first two, which
should please those who didn't like Beautiful Garbage (a group I am not
part of), and I think it is pretty, bloody good. Oh, yeah: it's
better than the last one.....
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