May 21, 2005
"What have I done?!" "Time to kill some kids." "Okay!"
In lieu of an actual review of "Revenge of the Sith," I instead present two thoughts that occurred to me during it:
1: Consistently better dialogue can be written by spraying diarrhea through randomly-chosen stencils. I'm guessing Lucas picked out his own stencils, so there you go.
2: Referring to point number one, I'm glad I don't carry a hip flask. Otherwise I would have played a drinking game in which I took a drink every time a line made me wince.
Special bonus thought: the special effects sure are pretty.
posted by Gar @ 4:50 PM
1: Consistently better dialogue can be written by spraying diarrhea through randomly-chosen stencils. I'm guessing Lucas picked out his own stencils, so there you go.
2: Referring to point number one, I'm glad I don't carry a hip flask. Otherwise I would have played a drinking game in which I took a drink every time a line made me wince.
Special bonus thought: the special effects sure are pretty.
posted by Gar @ 4:50 PM
Concerning your point two, I can attest that a form of liquid constitutional made the dialog bearable, indeed somewhat not bad for me. However, my expectations were very low going in to begin with and I pretty much read word for word the whole movie in advance. Considering that I'm pretty sure (have to check on this, I don't remember who it was) Lucas got some rewrites done on the dialog I wasn't really surprised. I don't think any SW movie ever had great dialog, including the much lauded Empire Strikes Back. But at least he could try for "not painful." TPM and AOTC were considerably more painful to me in that respect. Overall I liked it, I just wish there were some moments of humor to even things out. SW sucks without some humor. To this end, R2D2 works well, not to mention that he's my favorite character in all the movies since he's the most competent and heroic character in the cast.
Two lines that made me groan:
1. Palpatine: "No! No! No! No no no no no!"
2. Palpatine: "ULTIMATE POWER!" WTF was that?
3. Vader:(deadpan) "Nooooooooooooooo." (stumble about like Boris Karloff)
Even the "romance" dialog wasn't all that bad. Certainly not good, but I didn't make retching noises like I did during my first viewing of AOTC.
All in all, I liked the movie. I would rank the pre-trilogy in the following order of preference. Let the flames begin.
1. Revenge of The Sith. Lots of action, bearable dialog, a sense of closure, questions answered. Major downer at the end, but SW fans expected that.
2. The Phantom Menace. Annoying kid, some bad acting, but fun. The fact that it was new and fresh made is good in a way that even Jar-Jar couldn't ruin.
3. Attack of The Clones. Super contrived, but somewhat forgivable as it's the middle act. Horrible acting, worse dialog, directing needed some work. "Our love is like a mystery." "I truly, deeply love you." "We would be living a lie."
Now these are my first impressions. I've said many times before that the more I watch each movie, the more things I find to like and the more bad things I tend to forget or downplay.
Two lines that made me groan:
1. Palpatine: "No! No! No! No no no no no!"
2. Palpatine: "ULTIMATE POWER!" WTF was that?
3. Vader:(deadpan) "Nooooooooooooooo." (stumble about like Boris Karloff)
Even the "romance" dialog wasn't all that bad. Certainly not good, but I didn't make retching noises like I did during my first viewing of AOTC.
All in all, I liked the movie. I would rank the pre-trilogy in the following order of preference. Let the flames begin.
1. Revenge of The Sith. Lots of action, bearable dialog, a sense of closure, questions answered. Major downer at the end, but SW fans expected that.
2. The Phantom Menace. Annoying kid, some bad acting, but fun. The fact that it was new and fresh made is good in a way that even Jar-Jar couldn't ruin.
3. Attack of The Clones. Super contrived, but somewhat forgivable as it's the middle act. Horrible acting, worse dialog, directing needed some work. "Our love is like a mystery." "I truly, deeply love you." "We would be living a lie."
Now these are my first impressions. I've said many times before that the more I watch each movie, the more things I find to like and the more bad things I tend to forget or downplay.
Ah, one more thought. The Jedi children are referred to as younglings. This is a stupid word. Yoda uses it once in AOTC and SW fans just accept that it's the term for child Jedi. Well, in the SW universe that's the correct term, but it's still a silly sounding word and I'm sure many people who don't obsessively read SW message boards are going emit a giant "WTF?" when they hear it repeatedly.
What would shock you more? The sentence "You killed children!" or the sentence "You killed younglings!" WTF is a youngling anyway. C'mon, George, have some people read the damn script aloud before you shoot it.
And one more thought. Swordfights swinging from cables are stupid. I was unfortunate enough to see Van Helsing and I had enough of that shit for a lifetime. I would say that Van Helsing was one of those movies that was fun if you didn't take it seriously, but I didn't and it still annoyed the hell out of me. I think in my old LJ I quoted someone as saying something to the effect that the director reminded that like a boy who discovered masturbation and didn't know when to stop.
I wouldn't put ROTS in that category but there were a few silly action scenes that I just had to grin and bear.
And I don't care what anyone says, the giant iguana was great!
Post a Comment
What would shock you more? The sentence "You killed children!" or the sentence "You killed younglings!" WTF is a youngling anyway. C'mon, George, have some people read the damn script aloud before you shoot it.
And one more thought. Swordfights swinging from cables are stupid. I was unfortunate enough to see Van Helsing and I had enough of that shit for a lifetime. I would say that Van Helsing was one of those movies that was fun if you didn't take it seriously, but I didn't and it still annoyed the hell out of me. I think in my old LJ I quoted someone as saying something to the effect that the director reminded that like a boy who discovered masturbation and didn't know when to stop.
I wouldn't put ROTS in that category but there were a few silly action scenes that I just had to grin and bear.
And I don't care what anyone says, the giant iguana was great!
<< Home
