First, I’ll start with the basics. The technical aspects of the movie. My complaints of the first episode were largely to do with how much CGI they used in it. It felt like I was watching a cartoon with actors standing in. Well E3 was almost entirely made up of CGI, but I found myself several times believing they were actually standing on foreign planets and high-tech spacecraft. The graphics were incredible – terrifically improved since the first one. The sound was great as well, as always.
The acting was a lot better than Episode II. Episode II was necessarily a love story, but I thought that most of the dialog was irrelevant and gooey where it didn’t have to be. It’s far greater in this one – namely Anakin, who has grown the hell up and looks and talks like he means business in this one. He still loves his wifey and does most of what he does on her behalf, but it’s not as gooey and weak to the storyline.
Now. The complaints: I don’t understand why they feel the need to throw humor into a serious movie but I’m okay with it. Just do it in the right parts. And don’t do it in a gay way. When we’re visiting the Wookies on their home planet, and they are swinging down from ropes onto ships and whatnot, do not make Tarzan noises. None of them could ever have heard of Tarzan (because this was a long, long time ago – remember? – way before Tarzan), their communication methods are a far cry different than ours, they don’t sound like that, it’s not funny, it doesn’t fit, and it’s gay. During that scene I think I threw up in my mouth a little.
I realize that every movie so far has had – for whatever reason – to include someone saying “I have a bad feeling about this”, but I think at the moment he said it, when there was no real apparent danger, just showed that they put it in there for no reason other than continuity. I think it would have been better placed when he hopped down off the ledge and was immediately surrounded by about a thousand droids. I’m not really that picky about most stuff, but when you know a certain phrase will be uttered, it holds more weight than some other certain phrases, and should be placed more carefully.
I won’t go into the complaints I have about the gravity and physics, because I’m not a loser. It is science fiction, and you’re allowed some otherwise hokey science because of that second word. Fiction.
On to the good stuff. There was one scene where I almost cried. When Anakin has become Darth Vader and has been given his first charge (killing all the Jedi at the temple), he walks into a room with a bunch of younglings. The boy who talks to him is visibly shaken when Vader powers up his saber. That scene, though only a few milliseconds long, was intense to me. That boy’s reaction was perfect and profoundly disturbing when you realize he really is going to do it. Had they shown even five more seconds of it, I’d surely have gotten teary-eyed. Due to necessary taste they cut it short.
The part where they are building the new Vader, they put on his legs, his suit, his vocal apparatus… And then they bring that mask down and it seals itself in place, completing the picture. And he takes his first breath as the Darth Vader we all know… Good God that was awesome. I got chills all up my arms. It was a defining moment in the life of the movie, and of course everyone had high hopes for its production. Well they handled it.
The part where Anakin becomes Darth Vader is another important milestone in the series, and it too was well done. When he kneels and bows to Palpatine, I nodded, feeling like I was watching history in the making. And again, got chills.
The battles between Palpatine and Yoda, and simultaneously, Obi Wan and Anakin, were terribly awesome. Yoda kicked some major-ass ass. There were many good fight scenes in the movie, but these two, and again I use the word ‘necessarily’, were pretty long. If I have to suffer a ten-minute-scene of anything it better be good. Well these particular battles were worth their weight. Remember the auditorium where they discuss the politics of the Republic? Those disks that people can hover out on so they can take the center stage, so to speak? Hell yes they get used. Go Yoda!