Tim Babb’s April Foolishness
Day 13

Another blast from my MySpace past! These are a pair of blogs I wrote about the final chapter in the Star Wars prequel trilogy, Revenge of the Sith. This first blog was written on May 18, 2005, after seeing an advanced screening before the film officially opened in theaters.

Don’t Believe the Star Wars Hype!!!

It’s no coincidence that “Sith” is a scramble of “Shit” Okay…that is too harsh. But The movie is not the amazing piece of Star Wars worth genius that Lucas, Spielberg, and even Kevin Smith are making it out to be. I don’t post this to convince you not to see the movie…I just don’t want your hopes as high as mine were when I went to see it. Go see it. You will more than likely enjoy it, but it will not meet your expectations.

I know what you’re thinking, “After Episode I and II my expectations are pretty low.”

You say that but admit it. All this talk on tv, radio, magazines…even the internet…you’re slowly getting convinced that this movie is a giant leap forward from Phantom and Clones. It’s not. It is better. I’ll go so far to say it’s much better. (Especially much better than Phantom) but it’s still not a “great” movie. And it’s still quite clearly in the Episode I and II ballpark and not anywhere near “IV, V, or VI.” I had bought into the hype that this was the movie that was gonna redeem the other two because it was so awesome. It doesn’t and it isn’t.

I will say the movie has many good points: Yoda looks amazing! (They’ve really spent some time improving CGI because he looks like a real…um…green thing) General Grevious actually looks pretty good too Ewan McGreggor turns in another fine performance! It is cool to hear Darth Vader talk again The darkness is definitely there. There are parts that are way darker than Empire ever was.

But they are balanced by the bad points: There are still glaring inconsistencies with the real Star Wars Trilogy. Anakin is still a whiny bitch. The special effects are still too phony looking (Less so than the first two, I’ll readily admit) Much of the acting is very wooden (Sammy…why?) Mace goes out like a BITCH! (Hell no! He’s a Bad Motha F***a!) R2 D2 is almost the Jar Jar Binks of this movie. And he again has new abilities that seem like they might have come in handy during IV, V and/or VI …ugh

All in all, it’s just a movie and the world will keep spinning and I will go about the rest of my life relatively unchanged All I’m saying is keep your expectations reasonably low. Better to say “Tim was way off the mark, that movie wasn’t so bad.” than to say, “What the hell is wrong with Kevin Smith?! I got my hopes up for THAT?!”

May the Force be with you.

That’s all well and good. Typical Star Wars nerd hating on Episode III. Nothing too amazing right? Well check out my very next blog from May 25…

Star Wars Hype: Second Thoughts

Okay…now I’ve read the novel (Yes actually read it! No book on tape this time) and I’ve seen it a second time and while I still don’t like Hayden’s performance. (He would have done well to study James Earl Jones’s tempo and manner of speech to turn his darker moments to more sinister rather than whiny.) I enjoyed the movie more. Knowing some of the things that the book expands upon made the movie feel a little more complete. And when I sat back and watched it without expectations it was indeed a fun little movie. Whether or not it fits into the “Star Wars” mythos and grandeur is irrelevant…it was a fun movie to watch and that’s all it’s supposed to be.

Wow. I actually paid to watch it a second time and then found excuses not to hate it. What a qumph!