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.