charging into a three day weekend with a half-day at work today — guess that makes it three and a half — and ready to do some big time lounging this memorial day break. but before i start piling up more stories of my various weekend antics, there’s that little matter of this movie i saw last weekend…

star wars episode III: revenge of the sith – 5 stars

now before you start yelling at me let’s hold on a second. you have to realize that i’m a big star wars fan. as in, as a misguided youth, i wore star wars clothing. i bought star wars books. as a smaller child, i pretended i was in star wars by riding a baseball bat through the forest (hallway) of my house like it was a speeder bike from jedi.

this being the case, i saw episode I three times in the theatre, i was just so excited for there to be another star wars movie. and i loved it. a few years later, sure, i can admit it was kinda crappy, but at the time that didn’t really matter. it was star wars, and that was that. the second one was less stupid because there was no retarded alien version of scooby doo following them around and screwing things up, and yes, i had started to admit to myself that it wasn’t that good either. but you know what, it was still star wars and screw you, i still loved it.

by now it’s so acceptable to hate these new star wars movies, people are bragging about not bothering to go see them. oh, how far we’ve fallen. but when it gets to that level, i think we’re starting to miss the point of star wars as a whole, and the reason why i can simultaneously admit that the three recent additions are kinda bad as films, but at the same time defend liking them so much.

yes, i know george lucas can’t write a love scene. he avoided this pretty well in the first trilogy by making the two characters falling in love so stubborn that they wouldn’t admit to it until the closing scenes of the third film, and brushing off all their prior courtship with joking and bravado from han solo. that was a good dodge. but in this round, he had to show two characters actually fall in love, and he floundered, and you’re right, watching hayden woo natalie is like watching high schoolers make out. gross. luckily this third one you can just patiently sit through those couple painful scenes and focus on the lightsabers.

like most people, i’ve come to the realization that even overall, george lucas can’t really direct actors. compare the performance of similar dialogue, written by george, from jedi to sith. the newly minted vader’s screaming “noooooo” in ep III vs. luke’s “nooooo” when vader threatens his sister in ep VI (“if you won’t turn to the dark side, then perhaps she will…”) are like night and day, even though they’re both melodramatic scenes scored by john williams for effect. and i think when you compare them you get to the point that makes everything star wars okay in the end, if you’re willing to be a little forgiving. that point is that essentially, for a fan, star wars is bigger than any film that visits its universe.

it’s true, this does sound like one of the dorkiest things i could possibly admit to believing, but i can’t deny it. most people would agree the original three were landmarks, and i would also agree to the fact that if those weren’t so good, and didn’t already exist, these current three might just have been another trio of blade films or something (i.e., who the fuck cares). but if you take for foundation the way the original three created a fictional galaxy that millions of us have grown to know and love, and add to it that YES, okay, george has gone a little crazy with his revisions of the classics and his insistence on directing the follow-ups, can’t you just see that what really happened is that he got so geeked up about completing this enormous story he gave birth to over twenty years ago, and filling out this entirely fantasy world with all manner of made-up planets and wars and species, that maybe he just got carried away and forgot to sweat some of the details he wasn’t prepared to tackle on his own?

he obviously has the special effects stuff down cold; those droids look pretty fucking real when jedi’s are chopping them up like carrots. and the overarching story, again, if you’re willing to forgive some of the specific dialogue and wooden performances that result from his directing, is AMAZING. come on, as a six-part arc, you can’t get much cooler! this is the ultimate story of wanting to change the world for the better and help the ones you love, and failing, making it so much worse for the corruption you suffered with power. but then coming around at the last possible moment, what could be thirty years later when your kid is grown up and dying at the hands the man who embodies your original mistake, and THEN making a difference after all the pain you caused, setting things right after decades of torment? come on! that’s spectacular storytelling!

so nevermind the stupid poop jokes from episode one (which i hated too), or the serious muppetude of the ewoks (which i always loved, personally), because this is too much more than that to worry about minor details. as a whole, which we can finally see, there’s too much good to hate it for the bad. i mean, try watching return of the jedi now that you’ve seen anakin’s failure in this new one, and tell me the third act isn’t seriously more moving now. vader’s stuck looking back and forth between luke and palpatine JUST like he was as anakin looking back and forth between palpatine and the Black Jedi Played By Sam Jackson (who of course has a name i can’t remember). only in jedi, now you know that he’s thinking back to his long-ago errors, and finally realizes his mistake! boom, his one action chanes the world again. once you’ve seen both scenes, they both become that much better. it’s amazing.

fine, then, you can say this third one is ‘better than the other two but that’s not saying much’, and be part of the cool crowd of neo-star-wars-haters. but that’s just narrow-minded, i think. the smarter move is to look at the bigger picture and just face it: movies with lightsabers are fucking cool.