So am I the only person who thought Star Wars III sucked?
I could care less about giving away spoilers. Most Star Wars fans are already up to seeing the movie a third & fourth time at this point.
Once was enough for me.
Sure, I’ll give credit where credit is due; The action in this movie topped all five of the other movies combined. I took great pleasure in watching the annoying and self-righteous Jedi get annhilated (and I’ll tell you why in a minute)… but the shitty dialogue and the way the movie ended makes me want to get my money back from George Lucas the way the South Park kids went after Mel Gibson.
1. Was Anakin slaughtering the younglings even necessary?
This scene greatly disturbed me and my son. It was so out of character for him that it was pointless. Anakin was that “Dark Hero” that we ALL liked and situations we found relatable… including selling our souls to save the ones we love. Stormtroopers were killing off all the other Jedi (who apparently couldn’t fight to save their lives), why not them? Better yet, why bother even mentioning the younglings? Were they even IN any of the other movies? After taking out all the douchebags that started the Trade War… Anakin cried. But he was ok hacking up the kids? Were they as annoying as the Jedi grownups?
2. Mace Windu - I’m glad you’re dead!
Lucas must have worked EXTRA hard to get me to dislike a Samuel L. Jackson character. Normally, he’s the coolest fucking guy in the film. But Mace Windu? He was the epitome of what was wrong with the Jedi and how Anakin did fulfill the prophecy of “restoring balace to the force”… he took out all the self-righteous shitheads. He had that “No, Because I SAY so!” arrogance you see from bosses that run a business down to the ground. So… why go and put on this bullshit facade that you were going to arrest the Chancellor when you intended to kill him in the first place? Hypocrite bastard. I waited a long time to see your holier-than-thou ass get thrown to your death out a window.
3. Obi-Wan - Are you a total moron, or just a partial one? So half a galaxy away you feel a great disturbance in the force as someone on a distant planet has a diarrhea attack… but you don’t know your own padawan is secretly married to a chick he’s been hitting on since he was a hot-rodding little urchin on Tattooine? Dude! You’re like those Catholic Priests that never experience life, yet feel qualified to give advice about it. You knew they were shacking up… JEEZ! You, Mace and Yoda need a couple of whacks with a clue bat!!!
“You were the chosen one!!!” “You were like a brother to me!!!!”
Nigga please. You tell him to stay put after hearing his mother has been captured by the Sandpeople and God only knows what those perverts were doing to her. If the Jedi were a REAL brotherhood, a few of them would have accompanied Anakin there and dispensed some “Don’t fuck with the Jedi”-style justice…. I’m surprised he didn’t walk out on your losers back then.
4. The Lefty nuts that thought Lucas was making a political statement
“So uncivilized,” responds Obi Wan after taking out General Grievous with his own blaster. A comment against the war in Iraq? No. More like an earlier response to Han Solo’s remark about “old hokey religions being no match against a good blaster” to Luke Skywalker.
Anakin: “You are either with me, or you are my enemy”… Like President Bush was the first (or last) person to make that ultamatum? Gee. See the last three movies where Anakin’s ordered to do things that make no sense, often against his best interest, treated like shit, not trusted… and then you wonder why he has a persecution complex?
What’s grating on my nerves lately are the comparisons of the Jedi -vs- Sith to “This group” -vs- “That group”. It aint. If two groups came anywhere near as close in comparison to the Jedi and/or Sith, I’d want nothing to do with either of them… because I think the Jedi and Sith are both assholes.
5. MORE Obi-Wan shitheadedness
“Darth Vader betrayed and murdered your father[, Luke].” Oh yeah… way to tell a half baked truth! I guess it was better than:
- “By the way, I chopped your father’s arms and legs off and left him to die like a dog.”
- “I guess I should have told your dad I stowed away on Padame’s ship while he was choking the shit out of her for betraying him.”
- “Oh yeah… I almost forgot! Your mom lost her will to live when you and Leia were born. I could have said something to give her hope (like motherhood) but I just sat there like a dumbass. Oopsie.”
6. The Sith are no way off the hook either. Trust me.
The Emperor is a piece of shit!
From the look on Count Dooku’s face when the order was given to kill him, from the grin on his face as Darth Vader cried for his lost wife… this guy and his bullshit went beyond any believability in this movie. To be a Jedi or a Sith meant “Which of a bigger asshole are you willing to be?”
7. Speaking of dying during childbirth…
This is a society where you get a severed limb replaced with a prosthetic one (with nerve endings) in 15 minutes… and women still die giving birth???
8. “We’re out of time… let’s wrap this up!”
Just a suckass way to end a film. The last 20 minutes needed to wrap up a zillion loose ends, and I don’t think anyone would have complained if this were a three hour movie… but they didn’t. They whizzed through it, leading you to believe it took 20 years to build the first Death Star, A younger Darth Vader (now with kung fu grip) never got a chance to kick ass in his new costume (despite all the promotional pictures you see), and you never see Obi-Wan talk to Qui Gon Jinn like the movie hinted.
If you look at it from a larger perspective, this being the third installment of a six part story then you’re happy & content.
If you HATED episodes I&II (like I did) was a big fan of the original series (like I was) then this movie will give you that same shitty depressed feeling that the Empire Strikes Back gave you….
… only there wont be any new movies to end it on a high note and make you feel good again.
FUCK YOU GEORGE LUCAS!!!!!
June 6th, 2005 at 2:57 pm
Fear not, Eric. You are not the only one who saw suckage in that film. It’s like the writer’s had a check list of items they had to tie up, and mechanically went through it, regardless of whether their wrap up made any sense or evoked any real response. The movie was, in that respect, boring. It sure as hell wasn’t a Star Wars flick.
“Oh yeah… I almost forgot! Your mom lost her will to live when you and Leia were born. I could have said something to give her hope (like motherhood) but I just sat there like a dumbass. Oopsie.”
ABSOLUTELY TRUE! TRUE, TRUE! Padme, as a weak willed fainting flower, could NEVER have spawned Liea Organa. No way, No how.
June 6th, 2005 at 8:10 pm
What Lucas does doesn’t bother me. I’m still pissed off about how Paramount let the writers run Enterprise into the ground with a season-long bad story line.
June 9th, 2005 at 2:18 am
Well, I’m probably the only person in the world who think all the Star wars movies suck..
June 17th, 2005 at 12:48 pm
Sorry for the long comments, but a few clarifications are in order:
Why wouldn’t it take 20 years to build the Death Star? The second Death Star took a couple of years to get to “fully functional”, which meant they had the superlaser online even though most of the station was empty space and they didn’t even have shields.
1) Yes, the “younglings” were in Episodes 1 and 2. In Ep. 1, Anakin would be considered a youngling. In Ep. 2, Yoda was teaching a class for younglings when Obi Wan came in and Yoda mercilessly made fun of him. As for crying after killing the Trade Fed guys, it’s more likely that since those were the last people he was tasked to kill, he was finally able to pause and realize the horrors he had just done.
6) You’re surprised that Palpatine is a heartless bastard?!? This is the same guy that created a war (and leading both sides) to set up his complete authority, sent an army to slaughter all the Jedi (though they did deserve it), and couldn’t care less about his “apprentices”. To paraphrase him in Return of the Jedi, “Strike your father down and take his place at my side!” Personally, I loved how amazingly manipulative and evil he was.
Otherwise, excellent review of it!
June 26th, 2005 at 4:54 pm
You know, I agree with pretty much everything you said here, -e-, and I liked the movie, so I can’t argue with you at all. One thing I do want to add is that I guess if you were lucky enough to see this movie in a digital projection theater (which I wasn’t because there isn’t one in the entire state of Wisconsin), there were two extra scenes in them. One of them was Yoda arriving on Dagobah and the other is Obi-Wan talking to Qui-Gon. They’ll probably be included in the DVD. They’d better, because when I heard about this, I was royally peeved.
June 28th, 2005 at 9:02 pm
Nope. I hated it too. Blergh.
Though my reasons are simple. Bad acting, bad writing, bad directing.