[The Other]

I saw ROTS last night and here is my review of the good the bad and the ugly (not in any particular order).

The opening scrawl was unimpressive and didn’t tell my anything I didn’t already know.

The space battle was meh. To paraphrase someone else “so many droids and ships can we get to the plot now?” Nice to see Anakin finally putting those so called great piloting skills to use though if a dozen years too late.

I liked the battle with Count Dooku short lived one that it was. At the end where Anakin has the lightsabers on either side of his head was gripping. The only let down was after Anakin killed him everyone was like “well that’s that great job Anakin.” In my opinion it would have been better if that had been Anakin’s turning point rather than at the Mace Windu window duel.

General Grievous, hmm how should I put it? Oh yes, sucked! The way he looked sucked, the way he talked and coughed sucked, and the way he rode around in the yo-yo of death sucked. Not even seeing him wield four lightsabers was entertaining. In fact I found that scene very boring. Having not seen the Clone Wars cartoon I have no idea what was up with this guy and his chronic case of laryngitis, and the confusion was only piled on when Obi-wan opened his chest to reveal a beating heart and nothing else. I saw no sign of lungs either organic or otherwise. Also what the heck was up with the beating heart? The guy is 99% machine, what in the world was it pumping blood to?

I was not impressed by R2 the amazing bouncing robot and his glorified fork on a stick. Nor did I enjoy watching C3PO practically jog his too shiny body after Padme and was grateful for his limited screen time. Although I did laugh when R2 shocked the battle droid and the droid kicked him over. In my defence so did the rest of the theatre.

I hated the voices of all the battle droids they made me cringe and wish I’d brought some ear plugs.

Well I mentioned it in the reasons to hate ROTS in advanced thread and I say it again: only Leia can pull off the hair buns. The way Padme had them made it look like she had grown an extra set of ears.

ROTS picked up where AOTC left off in terms of the romance. Awkward, wooden, and zero chemistry, and why was Padme moving her eyes rapidly back forth when looking at Anakin? Does he have a really big zit on his nose and that’s why she can’t look directly at him?

Was anyone else bothered by the fountain in the middle of Anakin and Padme’s room? From the minute it was in the shot all I could think was: “hey I got that for my Grandma for her birthday three years ago. Did she ever set it up?”

Hey Lucas, Nintendo called and they want their Gameboy advance back.

Was it my imagination or did Obi-wan pull something out of his mouth when he climbed out of the lake? I do believe we’ve seen the return of J.U.B.A.

The opera scene was hard to watch. Not because I spotted Baron Crapanoida (I didn’t), but because I just couldn’t understand why people were entertained watching sperm like balls of light float through jelly.

Why do all the Jedi only have blue and green as their lightsaber colours? Nobody besides Mace wanted something different? How about orange, yellow, white or black? Lets have some variety here.

Chewbacca, not necessary, not necessary, and did I mention not necessary? He didn’t do anything except take Yoda to his ship. He looked nothing like Chewie from the OT so for all intents and purposes he might as well have been someone else entirely.

Loved, loved the Order 66 sequence. If I had to pick one thing in the whole PT that came close to capturing the spark of the OT that was it. Beautiful score, good cutting between the scenes, great scenes themselves. A wonderful piece of movie making in my humble opinion.

Didn’t understand the whole Anakin gets appointed to the council, but doesn’t get to be a Master thing. For one thing the council said they appoint members themselves and don’t like the idea of Palpatine telling them what to do, so why did they do what he said? Couldn’t they have just told him, in politer terms, to go screw himself? What harm was there going to be from simply saying “we don’t want to appoint Anakin to the council at this time.”? The other thing was Anakin being upset that he didn’t become a Master the minute he got on the council. If something like that has never happened before then he should be honoured that he is the first, but he goes and throws a tantrum.

However the thing that struck right with this was in OT Vader said “when I left you I was, but the learner. Now I am the master.” This is consistent with the fact that Anakin never becomes a Jedi Master in the PT. Could it be? Something with proper continuity to the OT? Wow!

Speaking of tantrum throwing. Anakin has improved as a character greatly between the two movies. I could see how he had been twisted by Palpatine into thinking the Jedi were his enemy. Besides the romance, some bits of clunky dialogue, and the scene mentioned above he was tolerable as the main character.

Did not like Yoda at all. Didn’t like how he looked, how he spoke and especially the way he fought. I wanted to smack whoever whooped in the row behind me when Yoda went for his lightsaber.

The movie falls into the same trap as the other two by having far more CGI than necessary. The scene with Anakin in the temple staring out to where Padme is and the scene where Obi-wan is trying to find Anakin would have been a lot more poignant if my eyes hadn’t been distracted by the freakin’ traffic passing by.

The whole plot of Anakin turning to the Darkside to save Padme was lame to the nth power. Every last Jedi, separatist, and who knows who else had to die so Padme could be saved and then she goes and croaks anyway! Bah!

The end of the Anakin Obi-wan duel should have been silent. No “I HATE you!!” stuff from Anakin or “you were supposed to destroy the Sith and bring balance to the Force!” from Obi-wan. It just wrecked the mood as I tried to figure out how having no Sith and only Jedi resembles any sort of balance.

The birthing scene had day time soap written all over it. The medical droids said they had to work quickly to save the babies yet it appears the twins were born via vaginal delivery. And what in the name of all things fashionable was Padme wearing? It looked like the bottom of a prom dress gone horribly wrong. I know they can only have infants of a certain age be in a movie, but considering the fact that Padme didn’t look to be any further along than six months especially for carrying twins and the fact that she was under a lot of stress during the pregnancy Luke and Leia should have been smaller. Finally the she lost the will to live thing was just vomit worthy. As Helena said, what is this a Victorian novel?

So disappointed with the Vader scene. The suit looked like a cheap plastic Halloween costume. The breathing and the voice weren’t powerful enough and when he finds out Padme has died ugh! Bad acting and looking like he was going to fall over any second. I almost threw my popcorn bag at the screen.

The final scene with Luke, Beru and Owen looking out over Tatoonie was excellent. I loved the parallel to Luke in ANH. However the scene loses points for not at least trying to deal with the Owen Obi-wan tiff and the Owen 3PO debacle.

Overall ROTS was definitely the best of the prequels by far, but I would still rank it below the OT.

*** Out of five.

[SPQR]

The fountain was vey Feng Shui, Padme installed it to keep the force flowing in her pad. She's such a trendy bitch, I think I saw Barney's shopping bag next to her armoir.

[Just another wretched fan]

i'd say that the best parts of ROTS were the best of the PT, the worst parts of ROTS were the worst of the PT. So i can't really rank it above or below TPM and AOTC