Movie Review - Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith

This made Speilburg cry? All I could think was: How on earth did this sticky treacle make that man cry. It just wasn't that good or that moving. There was too much to mock and frankly, the script was so awful, direction so juvenile and the plot, wait, there was a plot? It was hard not to start mocking out loud, but I truly was afraid the star wars believers there would shoot me with their laser guns.

There were too many silly things to be believed, and before you blast me, I know this is fiction, it's just BAD fiction. Good fiction transports you away to new worlds and makes you believe that they could exist. In George Lucas' Star Wars world there is a vast emptiness of nothing to draw you in and make you believe it could have happened. Star Trek was silly, but somehow made me believe long enough to just enjoy the entertainment. RotS just makes me mad I wasted my time.

There were some little things, like Padme's night gown, it's lovely, really beautiful. In fact, I had no idea it was a night gown until I saw her in bed with it still on. The problem? Beads, lots of them, strings of them across her arms. She's pregnant and sleeping on her side wearing a dress more suited to meeting the Queen of England than catching some shuteye. All I could think was: My arm would be asleep in that, it looks uncomfortable. But often it's the stupid little things that lend believability to unbelievable stories. Lucas fails miserably to bring his audience, me, in to the plot to care at all what happens. It's just a series of cool but meaningless special effects that are just mildly interesting in the way that watching grass grow is mildly interesting.

Anakin's final transformation into Darth Vader was laughable. Obi Wan and Anakin have a lightsaber duel floating on lava on a volcanic planet without any sort of heat protection and absolutely no breathing apparatus. First of all, he lost me at hello. Volcanic planet? It's one big lava flow, and lava being notoriously treacherous for humans or anything else slightly alive, between the intense heat and toxic gases, I can't believe that even Jedi powers can overcome the physical difficulties of dueling inches away from toxic flowing lava. So already I'm laughing. Then Anakin loses his limbs, then he catches on fire, but hey, he's still alive enough to curse Obi Wan who just walks away. (Has no one learned that you don't just walk away from an evil person, you must actually KILL THEM DEAD. Dang, do I have to do everything?)

The emperor shows up and collects the crispy cripple and shuttles him off to the hospital where he gets turned into the Lord Vader we all know. Now, in the hospital HE'S STILL SMOKING when they lock him into the Vader suit. What, people in that world don't need to heal from third degree burns? How about stripping all that melted cloth off him before you attach his prosthesis? How about some skin grafts? Maybe give him a little advil? Why not just put him out first! Just pour some water on him. I'm sure Sith Lords are powerful, but still, do they not suffer from infection because of badly cleaned, or in this case uncleaned, wounds? At least put some cream on those burns, that suit will chafe.

As I watched the "battle" between the Emperor and Yoda all I could think was "They got the wrong muppet to kill this guy, give Animal a lightsaber and he would have offed him quicker than you please. That would be a fight I'd be happy to pay to see."

And what was all the excitement about going to the Wookie homeworld. It's not like anything happened there that was slightly interesting. All you find out is that Chewbacca is an old dog. That's it. Whatever.

All in all, I give it an F. Lucas wasted four movies and some incredible actors to pile up 8 hours of trash. How do you make Liam Neeson, Natalie Portman and Ewan McGregor look like no-talent high school actors? How in the world do you take the edge out of Samuel L. Jackson? The dialog was so weird, stodgy, stilted and silly, just plain old silly, as to render it laughable. The original Star Wars (ANH) was fun and incredible and a blast, the Empire Strikes Back (TESB) was equally fun. Then it all fell apart into sappy stupid vacuous nothingness, like the emptiness of space. TESB was, by the way, the only one of the movies that Lucas did not direct, and that only one he had help in writing, it is by far the best of the lot. That's very telling, and very interesting. George Lucas has a vision, and it could have been a fun one, but he let his navel gazing pride get in the way of making great movies. He should have gotten help, outside eyes to assist him, someone unafraid of saying "Midiclorians? That's stupid and doesn't flow with what came before." and "Another Senate scene? Gimme action, fast and furious! Common, let the Wookies really fight!" I wanted to shout "The Empire has no clothes!!" It started with the Ewoks. Stupid teddy bears, just too cute.

This movie, and the previous junk, Episodes 1, 2 and 6, all lacked the kind of character development that draws an audience in to want to come back. The plot, writing and direction were ponderous in the way that a legless hippo trying to wriggle it's way ashore in wet season mud is ponderous, and trite. I didn't care at all about any of them. Frankly I missed the Death Star blowing up planets willy nilly, that was fun stuff. I wanted to Emperor to win, he at least was interesting to watch. Just like at the tedious end of Titanic, I wanted to shout "DIE, please, just die!!!" Thankfully, this franchise will die and be resurrected no more. I think it could only have been worse if Ben Affleck had played Obi Wan. (Now, if I could just convince the Rolling Stones to stop touring, my work here will be finished.)

There is one consolation, and it is a small one, M&M's came out with dark chocolate M&M's. Wait, see, the Emperor did win. SWEET!

*At the theater were some Star Wars geeks, people dressed up like the characters. The best part of the whole experience was getting an ironic chuckle because the guy in the vader suit was shorter than everyone else. I mean like 5'2", shorter than me. Oh, and the other guy in the vader suit was using his lightsaber as a tapstick for a blind person. I nearly snotted soda out my nose. That was funny.

You Can't Ever Take It Back

In 1900 four journalists in Denver sat down to figure out what kind of blockbuster story they could come up with, but it would be a hoax. The story that ran was about a local contractor winning the bid to tear down The Great Wall of China. This story was picked up by the international press. It was all fun and games until the story got to China. In a land already inflamed by fear of foreigners and a fastly imploding ruling class, that was the spark that set off a year of slaughter. The Boxer Rebellion left many innocent dead, including many Chinese.

Now if any of this sounds eerily familiar, you may have heard about the the riots, the calls for jihad and the 17 deaths that have resulted from the fictious bit piece in Newsweek's Periscope regarding the supposed desecration of the Koran in GITMO. Now, however much Newsweek apologizes for their error in reporting an unsubstatiated rumor, they can't fix the havoc wreaked by this rumor taken as truth. It was absolutely irresponsible of them to print it, especially with out fully vetting it. Good luck trying to get the truth out there, Muslims won't believe it, neither will the progressives. Both love conspiracies too much to hear the truth.

Lately, freedom of the presses is translating into slander, rumor-mongering and libel, and it begins to look more like abuse of liberty than freedom of the presses. CBS, The New York Times and Newsweek have all been guilty of making up stories to suit their political ends. But now it's begun to cost the lives of innocents a world away. Just like it did in China a century ago.

Liberty and freedom are costly things, they come with a hefty price tag. One of the costs of liberty is the responsibility to use it wisely. Freedom of the presses means only that the government can not tell you what you can and can not print. It does not mean that you can print just anything. It means that with careful research, vetting and honor, you can choose to run stories that will matter, make a difference and inform. You also have a responsibility to weigh the outcomes of printing a story. It's called self-editing.

Creatures that make you go "hmmm"

Hmm - Part 1
So let's say that your daughter steals some money from you then goes on a bike ride with her best friend when she's supposed to be home grounded, what do you do? Probably stabbing the girls a total of 30 times and beating the heck out of them and leaving them to die in the park wouldn't be high on a rational parent's mind. But to Jerry Hobbs it made sense. He says he was mad that she was out WITH her mother's permission ON Mother's day, and that her friend pulled the knife on him. Yeah, right. Dude just got out of prison, I'm totally sure he could have disarmed a 9 year old little girl with out beating the crap out of her then turning the knife on her. Sheesh, he could have run back to her mother and told on her.

Hmm - Part 2
It's 2005, right? If you live in the Washington DC/New York, NY area, which includes Pennsylvania, and you were able to vote in 2001 you remember life before the terrorist attacks and you can now tell the difference. One thing would be the extra security around buildings, much of which was actually put in place after the Oklahoma City bombing. Another change would be the much expanded no-fly zone around Washington's power center. Now if you are a pilot, even of a small Buddy-Holly-Lawn-Dart Cessna, you would be aware of the extensive no fly zone AND of the stated intentions of the US Military to shoot down any aircraft straying into that no fly zone and failing to respond.

Now read this wee little paragraph:
"The Cessna pilot appeared confused by the aircraft escort and did not respond to repeated signals ordering the plane to turn away. The F-16s fired four warning flares before the Cessna finally veered west and away from the secure zone." (from My Way News, story linked below)

Some student pilot and his teacher from Pennsylvania wandered into the no fly zone and were seconds away from being shot and killed AND THEY DIDN'T RESPOND? Why? Maybe they turned their radio off or just didn't like the "tone" of the F-16 pilots and ground control. What ever, they are obviously too stupid to be allowed to fly, maybe even drive. I'm not sure what's really confusing about an F-16 wagging it's wings at you and acting threateningly, they are fighting aircraft build for war after all.

Also, I'd like to point out that Washington DC has a VERY distinctive aerial look. It's not really like you can miss either the Appalachians on one side, the Potomac in the middle and the Chesapeake on the other side, or DC itself.

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20050513/D8A207VG0.html

Back in the USSR

Was anyone else weirded out by the display in Red Square in Moscow yesterday? I mean the display of the hammer and sycle and the old Soviet uniforms. Did anyone else feel like that wiley old Putin, (former KGB guy if I must remind you) was putting on more than a show for the 60th anniversary of V-E Day, a Soviet specific day. And that this same Putin is the one denying that life was anything other than rosey for those Baltic States that got the snot kicked out of them when they were annexed for their own good by "Uncle Joe".

For those of you who read this who have a short or faulty memory of life under Stalin, can I remind you of some things. Gulags. Pogroms. Ethnic Cleansing. Government Created Famines. Torture of Political and Religeous Prisoners. Nuclear Proliferation. China, Vietnam, Korea, Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Columbia. Remember. Don't forget, the Soviets were brutal, life smothering, evil creatures who really did want to take over the world and subjugate us. Not free us, but smother us and remove from anyone any shred of individuality so that we would serve the purposes of the Kremlin. If you've been keeping up on your History Channel watching you would have heard this little refrain before, from the mouth of Himmler, a peach of a guy who was so grossed out by brain splatter watching his SS work at killing Jews with shots to the back of the head, and undone at the inefficiency of it all, that he invented the concentration camps.

Just a thought.