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Saw Ep. II last recently. A few notes...
These days, the rule with Star Wars movies seems to be if you can't say anything bad about the latest one, don't say anything at all. It's like people are DETERMINED to hate them. There seems to be a de facto consensus on what FEELS like it belongs in the series and how it should be extended. But the fans aren't making it. Only one man is, and we are not privy to his thought processes. Deal with it. I hear a lot of complaints about the line deliveries. Ep I was worse, IMO; I would have had Qui-Gon and much of Obi-Wan's lines intoned differently. And someone other than Jake Lloyd as Anakin; the kid practically grew leaves. Natalie Portman, Samuel L. Jackson, and Ian McDairmid, OTOH, were perfect, or nearly so; I would have chosen the same takes as GL did. In Ep II, they're great again, and Hayden Christensen joins them. The general level of acting, while not alyways stellar, was at least bearable, functional for what it had to do. Jar Jar is mercifully out of sight (I didn't mind him in principle in Ep I, but there was just so MUCH of him...) Some things had raised my eyebrows when I heard of them before veiwing. Christopher Lee as Count Dooku...what, being Saruman wasn't enough for him, now he's got to have a lightsaber? But I can't argue with his skills. Jimmy Smits as Bail Organa, however...I absolutely did NOT see Organa as looking like him. It takes some getting used to. There is some use here of huge, indistinctly-defined spaces: the clone and droid factories. These appear to be vast single chambers, miles on a side with no visible supports. Would they have enough geothermal and wave energy for all those anti-gravity lifters to keep the ceiling up? Too much eye candy throughout. So many scenes with too much to take in at one viewing. Usually, it's just a cheesy marketing line, but here it's true: if you've only seen it once, you haven't seen it all. Next showing I've got to concentrate on the arena battle. The Jedi get to kick butt. Their destruction clearly begins here: 200 Jedi reduced to about a dozen that we see. Their numbers will be further reduced in later battles in the war, probably to only a few hundred before Vader begins hunting the rest. But the bettle lives up to expectations and demands. One thing does bother me that I don't think anyone has mentioned before: Yoda fights. Everyone cheers at finally getting to see him in action, but I just have to wonder: Why is GL being allowed to get away with this? All the time we've known Yoda, he's old and infirm, and now he suddenly moves like he's 600 years younger? But if we can accept handwaving his infirmities away, the fight is great. I always wondered how he would have fought as a young Dagoban; his size seemed to put him at a disadvantage relative to 6-foot beings, the height of most species in the galaxy. Apparently someone who knows combative arts put some thought into it as well, and came up with a persuasive solution: Yoda uses a style that emphasizes mevement and agility, turning his small size into an advantage, moving around his foes like a hummingbird. So at least it dosen't look ludicrous, as I had feared it would. I see more complaints of boredom with the politics. This stuff is improtant, people. It solidifies the background and make it relevant to us. They hit you over the head with Anakin's rebelliousness. He says too much in each scene; they should break the lines up into several scenes, make it more gradual. But I guess then the film would have been four hours long. As it is, it seems he's more than halfway to the Dark Side already at the *start* of this one, to say nothing of the end... Looking forward to Ep. III: Palpatine drops his disguise and gets declared Emporer. Since Leia remembers her mother in ROTJ, Padme should survive to the end of Ep III; but if she was still thinking the Organas were her birth parents, she may have been remembering Bil Organa's wife, and never knew her true biological mother, any more than Luke. Scenario: Anakin slaughters most of the Council, but may still be rescued from the Dark Side by Padme's love; but Palaptine arranges for her to be convinced he is truly lost, and the only thing to do is stop him by any means necessary. So his conversion is sealed by Padme, the last person in the Universe who loves him, betraying him... Well, we'll see.
EJH
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