Sunday, May 22, 2005
Star Wars III -- My Commentary!
Saw the movie yesterday. My comments.
First, very mediocre storytelling -- great movie making technically, but lousy storytelling. Lucas makes kung fu movies -- the minimum plot necessary to carry the audience from set piece to set piece with the dumbest dialouge. Every time the Sith and Jedi started talking about whose powers were greater, I heard some Asian guy saying "My kung fu is stronger than your karate."
Speaking of which, I really wonder if that is not what Lucas did, borrow from Asian film traditions and make it American. When the original came out, no one in America had seen a kung fu movie except film students like Lucas.
Anakin Skywalker is the least tormented pivotal character I have ever seen in a movie. He puts on and takes off entire personaes like you and change clothes, with a yawn. Bad writing, worse acting.
Philosophy. I really wasn't going to write about this, but SmartChristian let me know that Mark Roberts was writing on it. Mark is using it as a springboard to discuss the Holy Spirit. Fair enough, but why bother? The philosphy in this movie made my skin crawl. It was morally relativistic, and acted like people can pick and choose between being good and evil.
This is the reason Anakin Skywalker/Darth Vader is such an unappealing character. He chooses evil. He is not overcome by it, he does not overcome it -- he chooses it. I don't like people that choose evil -- which makes movies about them hard to watch. It would have been OK if the Sith had somehow tapped into some evil inherent in the boy, but he just decided to be a Sith. Yeah, they make it look like they tempted him, but I'm not buying it.
First, very mediocre storytelling -- great movie making technically, but lousy storytelling. Lucas makes kung fu movies -- the minimum plot necessary to carry the audience from set piece to set piece with the dumbest dialouge. Every time the Sith and Jedi started talking about whose powers were greater, I heard some Asian guy saying "My kung fu is stronger than your karate."
Speaking of which, I really wonder if that is not what Lucas did, borrow from Asian film traditions and make it American. When the original came out, no one in America had seen a kung fu movie except film students like Lucas.
Anakin Skywalker is the least tormented pivotal character I have ever seen in a movie. He puts on and takes off entire personaes like you and change clothes, with a yawn. Bad writing, worse acting.
Philosophy. I really wasn't going to write about this, but SmartChristian let me know that Mark Roberts was writing on it. Mark is using it as a springboard to discuss the Holy Spirit. Fair enough, but why bother? The philosphy in this movie made my skin crawl. It was morally relativistic, and acted like people can pick and choose between being good and evil.
This is the reason Anakin Skywalker/Darth Vader is such an unappealing character. He chooses evil. He is not overcome by it, he does not overcome it -- he chooses it. I don't like people that choose evil -- which makes movies about them hard to watch. It would have been OK if the Sith had somehow tapped into some evil inherent in the boy, but he just decided to be a Sith. Yeah, they make it look like they tempted him, but I'm not buying it.
