The Tease of Things I Don't Need

Saturday with the Sith (and a little comics afterwards)

This should prove spoiler-free.

Overall, Star Wars Episode III: The Revenge of the Sith gets a thumbs up. Not a "woo-hoo!", doing handsprings rave of a review, but a steady "I'm glad I went out to see it."

Part of the reason is that it does a reasonably good job of giving us what we needed to put everything in order for things to pick up 16 or so years later (their time) with Episode IV, which we ancients simply refer to as Star Wars.

Part of it is that it simply works so much better than the first two episodes did. There was so much that needed to be done in this film that there wasn't much time for screwing around. Action, deception, conflicts, deaths, slippery moral slopes, transformations, and a retreat-and-lick-their -wounds ending (as anticipated) reminiscent of 1980's Empire Strikes Back -- which I'm more than inclined to declare remains the pinnacle of the Star Wars series.

While no academy award-winning perfomances are to be found, the actors seemed generally more comfortable this time out. Providing you're not some supercilious prick listening, with poison pen in hand, for any inconsistencies in Ewan McGregor's accent, the performances should go down reasonably smoothly.

As with any of these films, anything approaching a working knowledge of physics, the behaviors of bodies in the microgravitational environment of space, and (especially in later portions of this film) of thermodynamics, will only prove to be a distraction. While the general environment of these films - the backdrop, at least - is interestingly science fiction...esque - the entire Star Wars story is not science fiction, but is instead a work of fantasy. There's nothing wrong with that. I'm likely not telling anyone something they don't already know with this, but it bears underlining.

I was surprised by what struck me as some clumsy computer-generated and overlaid graphics, in particular some from within a stone's throw of the end. I'll be happy to compare notes on that - along with other particulars in the movie - with others after they've seen it. It's opening weekend, though, and I didn't want to post anything that might spoil the film for someone.

Fan reviews are likely to be wherever one looks by the end of this weekend, and I'm not going to try to do a survey of them. I will note Tony Collett's review, which is similarly both positive and safe reading for people who haven't gotten out to see it. I have to echo how this film, continuing a theme from its two most recent predecessors, fairly pointedly underscores how some will seek to gain and hold power by manufacturing a threat and plunging a people into war. It was one of the (very) few interesting points for me in Episodes I & II, in fact, and so is just underlined more forcefully in this one.

Over on his blog earlier this week, Highlander mentioned (scroll down to "It's your hand, Buckaroo") how he and a buddy noted there was a theme "about a democracy slowly being corrupted by rampant militarism" present in the first film. While I believe him when he says they had that discussion, I must say this has me a little baffled. Unless they were deeply enough into the Star Wars phenomena to read the novels the came out along with and shortly after the first film (items I generally had no contact with, though I did read the novelization of the second film in my impatience for Empire's opening day), which may have underscored some of the history the movie didn't have time to lay out, I'm forgetting something, or H & pal were bringing some outside baggage to their interpretations. Perhaps I simply wasn't looking for anything beyond the fantasy adventure and moreover wasn't a political enough animal at the time. Whatever the reasons, I didn't and don't (to the extent that I remember the movie) see that as being a strong and obvious theme in the first three movies.

Granted, I haven't watched 1977's Star Wars in years -- when I saw it the emperor was The Emperor -- and the general feel was that we were seeing something more like the transition of ancient Roman government from a more senate-controlled, peaceful and stable enough, but ultimately corrupt and wealth-centered body to a truly imperial system with the will of a single, (supernaturally-powered) individual behind it. All we knew was there had been a power grab, (the senate dissolved) and since there was all this chatter about a Dark Side of The Force, it seemed sufficient that there was a somewhat mystical evil behind it. We had little to no clue if there were any subtleties to the motivations or to how the Emperor got to be the Emperor, but I don't recall anything in that first film especially that made the history of the empire really clear or fixed in time, or to even suggest that what had gone before was really a democracy as we would think of it. All we knew, from Obi Wan's little spiel about "before the dark times. Before the Empire...", was that at some earlier time the Jedi Knights acted as some sort of police force for the galaxy, either enforcing some set standards of law or dispensing justice as they (or The Force) saw fit. For all we knew, Obi Wan was talking of a time even before his own when recalling an ideal period. The mention of "The Clone Wars" was distantly cryptic. Luke and the others knew about it well enough that there was no need for any exposition which we might have found enlightening. For my part, it wasn't until The Phantom Menace that we saw a senator with a dark agenda and darker secret play both ends against themselves and plunge their political system into a war in order to make a power grab. In 1977 (and '80 and '83) all I knew for sure was that a mystical baddie had siezed the reigns of power at some point before "A New Hope" began - siezing it enough that there was an active, interplanetary rebellion - and then tightened his grip immediately before the film started. Any word of artful intrigues and clever deceptions being used to gain that power either weren't there or I simply missed them.

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After we were done with the movie we emerged into the almost unnatural brilliance of the midday, and swung by Wade's Comic Madness (almost always having whatever comic I happen to be looking for) to pick up the first issues of The OMAC Project, and The Rann-Thanagar War, two of the four mini-series leading up to DC's hyperbolically-titled "Infinite Crisis." Each had sold out almost everywhere upon appearing, and the first at least has already come out with a second printing.

Also picked up were the second issue of Green Lantern: Rebirth (I already found 1 and 3-6 a week or so ago, so I was only missing this issue), and on a whim I picked up the first two issues of Spider-man: Breakout because it tied in to the opening arc of (the still ill-named) New Avengers. The artwork by Manuel Garcia and Raul Fernandez looked reasonably good (if not especially remarkable) and I had no opinion one way or the other about writer Tony Bedard, never (consciously, at least) hearing about him before - so here's where I'll get to start having an opinion on his work. I'll know what sort of move - good, bad or indifferent - buying into the opening sections of this 5-part miniseries was a little later. This is the sort of move that drove me away from trips to the comics shop in the first place; I give in to impulse buys too easily.

(The trio for this outing was my son, Nick, and his friend, Matt, btw.)

After that, we had lunch at Pizza Hut (kids' choice du jour) then did a drive-through of our old, unlamented neighborhood (left behind four years ago) because we were in the area.

A long, scenic route back home, then onto some chores and email before getting to this... and that's been the day thusfar.