The Episode III spoiler-filled reviews and impressions thread

[The Former DMiller]

I got into this thread late since I just saw Episode III tonight and I didn't want to spoil anything. I'm not going to respond to all of the individual comments on the movie, but I will say that the most important thing a professor told me in one of my film study classes was to "willingly suspend your disbelief." He used Mary Shelley's Frankenstein as an example saying that we don't need to know whether Frankenstein goes to the bathroom at all as it isn't relevant to the movie and the director believes it is not something we need to know, or is something we can fill in for ourselves. For much of the things in the Star Wars movies I have willingly suspended my disbelief and not let little plot holes bother me.

As for Episode III itself, I thought it was easily the best of the new trilogy, and also better than Jedi, but I don't think it was better than New Hope or Empire. I've stated before that I hated Phantom Menace and Clone Wars, but this movie had more of the good and less of the bad. I loved Palpatine's ascension as it had so many parallels to Hitler's rise to power and I am a huge WWII buff. Those who aren't familiar with Hitler's rise may not know that he was pretty much unopposed. Hitler was voted into power, and the German Reichstag (Senate) eventually granted him more and more power before he finally disbanded it (as the Emperor did in the original trilogy). Although there were dissenters to Hitler and the Nazi party, they were in a quiet minority, and once he had gained enough power those in the minority were smart to remain quiet.

Anyway, I still think the love scenes in Episode III were awful. I know Padme and Anakin are young and their love should be a little awkward, but I just think the combination of mediocre actors trying to act awkward leads to a bad scene. I now don't totally blame the poor love scenes on Lucas as Christensen and Portman aren't the greatest actors. Still, it does stem from Lucas a little as he is suppose to direct the actors and he chose them in the first place.

McDiarmid, however, was great as Palpatine. Palpatine may be the most interesting character in the trilogy outside of Anakin, and McDiarmid played the part perfectly. He coldly and carefully lured Anakin to the dark side, and although I think Palpatine revealed himself to Anakin too early (willingly suspending my disbelief by believing that Palpatine forsaw that Anakin would fall regardless) the way McDiarmid plays the part makes it all believable. As for the people saying Anakin turned too easily, I will side with those who have said he has been turning to the dark side since the end of the 2nd movie. The act of stopping Samuel L. Jackson from killing Palpatine was just one of the final steps on his path to the dark side. He wasn't totally lost at that point, but he felt that the only way to save Padme was to become the apprentice of Palpatine and attempt to learn the power to save lives. At this point he went further down the path of the dark side in following Palpatine's orders.

There's a lot I want to say, but I'll just finish by saying that I do think that Lucas does go a little overboard with the CGI. Yes, I understand that fantasy lends itself to CGI, but I just don't think every single scene needs to have gigantic CGI landscapes. It almost takes a little of the magic away from the scene when you see yet another wide angle shot of a cityscape with hundreds of ships flying around. The scenes are just too busy and do not allow your eyes to focus on anything leading to a muddled scene. I also agree those who said General Grievous was useless. He was a very one-dimensional character who stuck around for way too long. Someone mentioned that it would have been interesting to know how he acquired his lightsabers, and that may have helped his character a little, but I don't think it would have been enough. The time that was spend on General Grievous would have been better spent building up the human characters more, imo.

Anyway, regardless of the few complaints I had about Episode III I thought it was implemented much better than the first 2 new movies, and I really enjoyed it. I did like the parallel scenes used when Yoda and Palpatine were fighting along with Obi-Wan and Vader as well as Padme's giving birth scene with Vader's "rebirth" scene. I just hope Lucas leaves the Star Wars franchise for good now, and doesn't attempt to make the movies after the original trilogy. I've heard that he changed a lot such as the fact that Luke wasn't suppose to fight the Emperor until the 9th episode so he might not be able to do the final trilogy even if he wanted to.