Episode III

Ever since Brian originally posted a nice little essay on Star Wars Episode III: The Revenge of the Sith, I remembered what it was like to be a boy between seven and ten.

I finally watched Star Wars III on DVD this weekend. It is the only one that I didn't go to the movie theater to watch. Episode II was so bad, to me, that I gave up on the franchise. I remember wanting to leave the theater, and the only other time that has ever happened is when I saw that terrible POS known as Batman Forever. I gave up on George Lucas' storytelling. I still believe to this day that he had only a rudimentary idea of the prior history before Episode IV: A New Hope, the classic film. I see him understanding that past as Tolkien had all those stories about the history of Middle Earth--all those back stories and legends that became mixed up in the great Lord of the Rings trilogy. But when you try to write those histories, they don't make as good of reading material. They don't.

As a kid growing up, Star Wars was always a part of a boy's life. I was four when the first movie came out and I simply can't remember if my parents took me to the theater for that one (I think they did). I do remember my mom and dad yelling for me to come running when Siskel and Ebert would show that great clip of Han and Luke at the laser cannons of the Millenium Falcon. I was seven when The Empire Strikes Back came out. That was the perfect age to read all the books, comics, and everything I could get my hands on, especially the trading cards. I loved those trading cards. I had them all at one point. We played Star Wars figures constantly. I also remember role-playing the characters like Cowboys and Indians, figuring out how to get Han Solo out of the carbonite. I remember writing a sort of fan fiction to figure it out on that grade school lined paper. I was 10 when The Return of the Jedi came out (which now, with the naming of this movie, I really understand why he changed it from The Revenge of the Jedi). I knew the names of all the characters that they actually don't say in the movies. I remember my fifth grade reading group calling ourselves the Ewoks. I remember Josh Dunnington and I creating an Ewok village drawing (I think this also started to spawn my hobby of dungeons and dragons because of the drawing of maps). Star Wars was embedded in my little boy's soul. Some of my best memories are related to how I think of my youth. Star Wars is at the top of the list, probably as high as comic books for me.

So these movies didn't do it for me, these prequels. Some elements were fantastic. The fact that Episode I: The Phantom Menace was enitrely set up for the Senator Palpatine to become the Chancellor of the Senate was a brilliant strategic move for a really good bad guy. Darth Maul and the double-edged lightsaber was fun. I remember watching Liam Neeson cut a hole in a door with his lightsaber and whispered to Brian, "Cool, I always wondered if a lightsaber could do that." But Jar Jar Binks ("Me-sa ruin dis franchise!") and those fricking midicholorians destroyed the movie. I still hate the fact that George Lucas felt a need to quantify the Force like an episode of Star Trek. And maybe it is just me but I kept looking at the new technology in the movie and wondering how it looked more advanced than episodes that were supposed to happen 30 years later.

Episode II was just bad. That actor they got to play the teenage Darth Vader was terrible. The biggest thing that upset me was how the marriage to Padme, Luke and Leia's mother, was handled. I just could not understand that he massacred the Sand People and then Padme still married him, knowing this. I really thought that needed to come after, as a sort of prelude to his fall in the next movie. Some of it was all right, especially the origin of Boba Fett.

Then Episode III comes along. I didn't go to the theater. Perhaps I was busy, perhaps I was making an excuse. I just didn't want to be disappointed. There was so much to the "legend" that I felt a little like I didn't need to see it. I wondered how "cool" a movie could be when the baddest guy in the galaxy went around exterminating Jedi. It was supposed to end on a real down note.

This was better. The whole Palpatine-Darth Vader set up with killing Dooku that is so reminiscent of the scene from The Return of the Jedi is actually quite brilliant. I always knew there would be lava involved in the lightsaber duel between Obi-Wan and Anakin, though I do not know how I knew that. I wish as I grew up that I had saved some of this source material. I really liked this one, maybe because it seems very close to Episode IV, especially with the glimpses of ships and interiors that look like they came from Star Wars (white spacecraft interior looks like that first ship from Star Wars). It seemed to directly be a precursor to the classic film.

Why couldn't Anakin sense the twins within his wife, when he can detect a Jedi in a spaceship above a planet? Why did Lucas let Obi-Wan in on the fact that there were twins when he specifically says in Empire, "That boy was our last hope." (And did we see any other female Jedi in any other movie?) Why would you bring Luke to his family on Tattooine when I would think that would be the first friggin place that Darth Vader would look?

Now I am picking it apart, and I shouldn't do that. I ruin it this way. I can't help it when my buddies and I would try to remember scene by scene in order to reenact the movie outside playing. There were some good elements to the movie. I thought that Anakin's fear of losing Padme was underdone. It was plausible but just not done well. It is a good glimpse into the origin of why he has to fall into the dark side, to get the power to save his family.

When we were younger, we had heard all of these rumors about there being NINE movies. I think the best stab at coming up with the next trilogy was Dark Horse Comics' mini-series Dark Empire. Luke Skywalker, in order to defeat a greater evil, must get power from the dark side in order to defeat it. He would fall into the same trap that caught his father. The difference this time is that he would be able to save himself from the dark side and still save the day.

This movie made me gather thoughts buzzing in my head for years, some of which have never been fully articulated. I mean, I have never gathered them into a formal paper or anything. So come on, George Lucas, what do you have in store for the next three? Even though I've heard that he is finished. But rumors sometimes come true.