Well, this has been a bit of a wake-up call. To most people my age, saying that you've never seen even one "Star Wars" film is like saying that you've managed to grow up in this culture without ever having heard rock 'n roll. But there are more than a few of you who never
have seen any of them.
The other night, a friend of mine was trying to persuade me to watch the new one. I almost agreed to go, until I found out that it's
140 minutes long! My attention span just doesn't have that kind of staying power, and I've always said that any filmmaker (or playwright, or composer) who can't get his or her point across in 90 minutes or less is in need of a good editor.
I mean, who does George Lucas think he is, Richard Wagner? The "Ring" cycle is even more drawn-out and tedious plot-wise, but at least the music is good. I'll agree with shemps#1 that the main flaw of "Revenge of the Shvitz" is that it's too long, without even having seen it— and I don't intend to.
So I can't write a review myself, but here's a French Canadian one that I translated using Babelfish. It covers the subject as well as any, I suppose:
"If the film starts in fast way (to read, a time more, in way puérile and infantile), the tone is aggravated therefore to the measure that the events precipitate. Paroxysmo is reached in end, while that is balanced in the world that was known in trilogie original, a world dominated for the oppression of the Empire and the shady side of the Force. Unhappyly, due to ineptitude George Lucas, the events in end do not have the emotional resonance completely that it would have expected. Nostalgia and gravity that helps, the Revenge of the Sith exactly offers certainly to some sequências of anthology and certain moments of emotion palpable. Visually so generally excepto to the some places is licked very where the numerical effect are, honest, embarrassing (it is necessary to see Christopher Lee to make pirouettes or one bebé "to float" its cover above). In a similar way, some images to bind directamente to episode 4 give some estremecimentos in end. But not sufficiently, not in such a way how much one expects.
When to the sequência where Darth Vader takes life, this last one generates as much unhappyly to laugh that at estremecimentos, due to an arguable homage to the Frankenstein of the director. The true problems start, as generally, when the actores (or numerical creations) open the mouth to become the Lucas words. As scénariste, Lucas is capable to write only two types of counterparts: those that serves to advance intrigue it directamente, and those that makes to creak of teeth in the front its ineptie. Those of the type that makes to say a robot-doctor who a personage is "to die of a broken heart," the Lucas ineptitude not for there.
One would say that to the measure that the technique improved, Lucas was worse productive. It imposes fractures your incessant ones, passing frequent in the exactly five minutes joked of youthful to the sequências of share (frequent had success, they say) to the exposition of the meandros of the scene. Its actores badly are adjusted, exactly the ones that know good as Portman and Jackson, exceptuando Ian McDiarmid (Palpatine) and Ewan McGregor (Obi-Wan Kenobi). These dois-lá must be had directed same they— to say first Ian McDiarmid, nor more nor less than soul third episode and that it offers performance probably better any film series. Its emperor Palpatine is not nor more nor less than the serpent of the terrestrial paradise, tenant Adam Skywalker and precipitating the descending for the hell of the remaining portion of the galaxy."
I can't add anything to
that, except, welcome back, Gertrude Stein.
:notworthy:
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