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Past Entertainment Articles.
Article for the week of 5/31/05
Really Pathetic Movie Review
Star Wars EP. 3: The Melodrama
By, Erin "Soon to be Allen" Schank.
A long time ago, in a theater not so far away…
The original Star Wars premiered and it was a hit. Then it was followed
by four more successful films, so if you don’t know what this one is supposed
to be about, then you must never have seen the others in addition to completely
avoiding television for the last couple of months. To summarize in one
sentence: Influenced by Chancellor Palpatine (AKA evil sith lord Darth
Sidious), Anakin gets more and more pissy, and begins to worry for the
fate of his now pregnant wife Padme, and ultimately turns to the Dark
Side to save her, not seeming to care about how his new career choice
will affect their marriage or the fate of the universe.
Unlike most of the universe, I was not as excited and optimistic about
the arrival of this film, for fear of how depressed and angry it would
make me, but I think Anakin’s turn to the dark side was well handled.
The film opens with a fast-paced space and shipboard battle to save the
Chancellor which while impressive and funny at times (R2D2 is great!),
does leave one asking, “When is this going to end?” I love lightsaber
duels as much as the next person, but the fight scenes in this film seem
to drag on forever. Additionally, the fight scenes often prove hard to
follow as the camera is frequently zoomed in on the lightsabers and the
duels are so fast-paced that they probably could have done away with the
choreography and just said, “Now swing your lightsabers around really
fast and bash them together a couple of times.” Overall, the movie was
enjoyable and while it offered plenty of fight scenes, it didn’t ignore
character development as so may action movies are prone to. The supporting
characters in this film were also not ignored and had some of the best
scenes in the movie. Yoda frequently had the audience cheering as he kicked
the storm trooper’s butts. Another plus for this film is that Jar-Jar
Binks has absolutely no lines, though he does appear. My only complaints
deal with the fight scenes and the historical inaccuracy of a certain
event at the end which I won’t mention for the readers who haven’t seen
the film. The Wookie battle seemed especially pointless. This excuse to
introduce Chewbacca was not that exciting and seems like a very poor defense
on the Wookie’s part. Hmm…Maybe if we wait for them on the shore and then
run at them with blasters we can beat them. Good grief, the Ewoks did
a better job at fighting a battle and they were 1/3 the size of the Wookies!
Some members of the media are hyping this as the “Best Star Wars film
yet,” which I completely disagree with. For those who have followed the
films, this is a good ending to the series (not that I won’t hope for
a 7, 8, and 9 someday), but this is not the most spectacular film ever.
Leaving the theater, I was struck by the thought that, “Hey this film
was actually pretty good,” but unlike episodes 1 and 2, I had no desire
to go see it again soon.
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