Disappointing

Today, I’m tackling a topic that you probably won’t expect to see in my blog: Star Wars. Brian and I went to see Episode III over the weekend. Since Episodes I and II were so awful, I didn’t really have very high hopes for the final installment, but deep down, there was a small part of me that hoped that I would be proven wrong. Unfortunately, this didn’t happen. The movie isn’t totally awful, and it’s definitely better than the last two, but it’s still not good. I really loved the original Star Wars movies, even the slightly silly Return of the Jedi. Maybe Episode III suffers from the fact that the audience already knows what is going to happen: Anakin Shywalker is going to go over to the Dark Side and become Darth Vadar. However, even with this foreknowledge, theoretically, the transformation should be interesting to watch, right? Well, not so much. His journey from noble Jedi to evil servant to the Emperor is just way too fast and the motivation just doesn’t really seem to be there. He’s such a whiny pain in the ass that him suddenly becoming big bad ass Darth Vadar just doesn’t seem plausible. A big part of his transformation has to do with his supposed great love for his wife Senator (formerly Queen) Amidala, but these two characters have zero chemistry together. Remember Han Solo and Princess Leia? They were a hot couple. Anakin and Amidala are about as exciting to watch as Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes. The movie has all sorts of cool action sequences and nifty CGI tricks, but it all left me cold, because I couldn’t help thinking that if George Lucas has spent a little less time on the gee whiz stuff and a little more time on characterization, this would have been a much better story.

Last night, we watched the first half of the original Star Wars. I felt like I had to do that, to remember what I liked about these movies in the first place. It still holds up. Yes, it looks dated in some ways, and the special effects aren’t much in terms of what we are used to today, but the story really works, and that’s the most important thing.

On other movie notes, we also watched Napoleon Dynamite over the weekend. It was cute and pretty funny, but it didn’t blow me away. People have really raved about this film, and I’m wondering if I missed something. Is it one of those movies you have to watch over and over again?

Last weekend, we saw Kingdom of Heaven, which I loved. I’m a huge history dork, so this movie was totally my kind of thing. I’ve been reading A Short History of the Crusades, so it was very timely for me. The reviews haven’t been very good, but I was pretty impressed with it overall, and I thought Orlando Bloom was really good in it, and I haven’t been bowled over by him in the past. I don’t want to be too unfair to Orlando—part of my not thinking he’s such a great actor was based on Troy, and it’s not like he was the only one in that movie who wasn’t good. Pretty much everyone sucked.

Another movie recommendations for me? We finally joined Netflix (still holding out on cable though), so I’m trying to catch up on stuff I’ve missed in the last year or two. I tend not to see a lot of movies during the summer, since it’s not the best time for thoughtful or subtle movies. Before Episode III, they did show a bunch of previews of blockbusters, all of which seemed to have lots of stuff blowing up.