BlogAlongAStarWars: Episode 3 – Revenge of the Sith

Hello :-)

So, here we are, the last one before the new one. You join me at the sixth and penultimate instalment of The Incredible Suit’s #BlogAlongAStarWars where I try to turn my previously Star Wars ambivalent self into a fan of this beloved franchise whilst simultaneously distracting myself from the crushing inevitability of death.

I won’t lie, last month was a struggle. I feel this is evident from the fact that, reading it back, my last post reads like a woman having some kind of pop-culture induced breakdown. Let’s hope this month’s a bit better then…

Revenge of the Sith opens three years after the events of Attack of the Clones. The Jedi are leading the clone army in the war against the Separatists during which Obi-Wan (Ewan McGregor) is sent to kill General Grievous (presumably Major Machiavellian was already taken?), leader of the Separatist movement. Meanwhile Anakin (Hayden Christensen) is appointed to the High Council as Senator/Chancellor/Emperor/Whatever he’s called this week Palpatine’s (Ian McDiarmid) representative with their growing relationship threatening the very core of the Jedi order.

Let’s start with a massive positive, the opening to Revenge of the Sith is great. It’s a lovely, continuous shot (I’m a sucker for continuous takes and sustained shots, see also: Birdman, first 20 minutes of Gravity and the work of Steve McQueen e.g. Hunger & Shame) of Anakin and Obi-Wan flying around Grievous’s ship in which Palpatine is being held captive. Things take a slight downturn when we actually get on to the Ship; R2D2 now has the ability to fly and shoot fire (did he get them at the same place Kitty Pride got her ‘send people back in time’ powers in Days of Future Past?) and Palpatine is now Anakin’s confidante in a way that was never built up or shown to us and thus is a tad hard to swallow, but other than that the sequence on the ship is actually, dare I say, kind of fun.

Alas, the fun cannot last because this is a Star Wars prequel and the universe is a place indifferent to our suffering. After the events of the opening Anakin is reunited with Padmé and so resumes the clunkiest romance ever to play out on the silver screen. Honestly, that balcony scene was so horrendous I don’t even want to think about it, not least because Padmé is stood brushing her curly hair for the duration and anyone with naturally or even unnaturally curly hair knows that you never go near it with a brush, not unless you want to look like Crystal Tipps…

This is also the prequel with the least shit performances in it. Hayden Christensen is not completely irredeemable, I kind of like the way he plays the conflicted double agent it’s just a shame he’s lumbered with some of the worst dialogue in the film.

This is definitely a film for the Mc’s; Ewan McGregor and Ian McDiarmid are on good form. Gone is all the whingey rubbish and Ewan McGregor is really given a chance to garner some sympathy for his character. He goes through the whole film being a proper good guy so when it rolls round in the final showdown and he says “I have failed you Anakin” it gets you. This is what happens when you write half decent characters Mr Lucas, people end up caring about them.

McDiarmid is the real stand out though. On full sugar, full fat, dialled up to 11 form, he cackles and camps his way to maximum panto villain. It’s perfect for a trilogy in dire need of a dose of daftness.

As well as occasional panto brilliance, Revenge of the Sith also goes darker than either of the previous episodes. Order 66 is genuinely horrible to watch. Admittedly if we’d have known these Jedi a little more it would have had even more of an impact but it’s accompanied by a haunting bit of music and shot in such a stark way that it’s hard not to be a little bit winded by it.

Whilst we’re on the subject, a quick word about the score. It’s par for the course now that the the score is awesome but it really, really is. John Williams you are a wizard. Even in the shonkey-est, most piss poor dialogued moments of the prequels, the score shimmers like a lush Oasis in a desert of crap. Stick that on the poster…

Finally we head into the third act and the infamous killing of the younglings. I get it, you want to show us that Anakin has gone completely evil and that is just about the most evil thing an individual can do. The trouble is Vader is supposed to be simultaneously ruthless as fuck and tragically sympathetic. At the end of Return of the Jedi we feel for him because he’s a fallen man, an impressionable soul gone wrong, yes he’s invisible chokehold-ed countless Imperial Commanders and reduced Alderaan to atoms but he’s simply been led astray. The whole Vader arc depends on that sympathy but when he’s committed mass child murder in such an up close, intimate way, it’s really hard to feel anything other than contempt for him.

Following on from this we get the Palpatine/Yoda and Anakin/Obi-Wan final showdowns one of which one almost works and the other has no redeeming qualities. The fight between Anakin and Obi-Wan is probably a bit too long and it’s certainly a bit too ridiculous. Why exactly this needed to take place on a Lava planet I will never know and all the jumping and swinging gets a bit too physics defying for my liking but on the whole it’s not half bad. For the Palpatine/Yoda fight I’ll take a direct quote from my notes “Yoda Palpatine fight = straight up bullshit”. I’ve already made my feelings known about when Yoda picks up a lightsabre but this fight is pure Yoda leaping, platform flinging bullshit.

So Anakin is defeated and left for dead, Padmé is in labour and appears to be dying of a broken heart. Then we have the parallel scenes of Leia and Luke being born and Anakin going ‘full Vader’. There was something about this scene, the birth scenes and subsequent chatter between Obi-Wan and Jimmy Smits that I really loved but I couldn’t put my finger on it. Then it dawned on me; they were filmed on a physical set. Yes, the effects of Revenge of the Sith are the best of the Prequels, it absolutely looks the nicest, but I don’t care how good your effects are, it’s not the same. You can have the sheen of artifice in other things but having a physical set where the actors can react to their surroundings is always going to yield better results.

And that’s it. Leia heads off to Alderaan with an entirely new identity and Luke goes to Tatooine where he keeps the same name as his child murdering father, erm…

Now I can’t vouch for how much of this goodwill is genuine praise and how much has come as a result of some kind of Stockholm syndrome that’s kicked in after Attack of the Clones, but from where I’m sitting this is definitely the best of the prequels. It’s still not great (they absolutely don’t need to have the Wookies in there but George can’t resist a bit of fan service), but, if I was in a kidnap/interrogation situation and I was forced to watch it as some form of torture, it wouldn’t break me.

So that’s it. I started #BlogAlongAStarWars thinking that this exercise was going to severely lower my expectations for Episode 7 but it actually hasn’t. I’ll admit the low point of Attack of the Clones was pretty bad, but now, looking back on the whole thing, I’m pretty optimistic about The Force Awakens. It’s done what I sent out to do, it’s turned me into a Star Wars fan (I bought a T-Shirt and everything) and I’ve really enjoyed it :-)

So, in the immortal words of RuPaul, JJ “don’t fuck it up”.

Final Thoughts 1: It’s established here that Anakin lives with Padmé, but does no one ever question that? I fail to see how no one in the past 3 years has asked Anakin about where he lives. Do they have a spare apartment somewhere that they’re fobbing off as his?

Final Thoughts 2: After Padmé informs Anakin she’s pregnant “I doubt the Queen will continue to allow me to serve on the Senate”. Good to see that institutionalised sexism is still thriving in a galaxy far, far away…

Surprise discovery: Ewan McGregor is Denis ‘Wedge Antilles’ Lawson’s nephew!  All together now… “Iiiiiiit’s a small world aaaafter all!”

Goodbye till next time :-)

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BlogAlongAStarWars: Episode 2 – Attack of the Clones

Hello :-)

We’re here at my fifth entry for The Incredible Suit’s BlogAlongAStarWars. Join me in this increasingly ridiculous exercise as I learn to appreciate this hallowed series and distract myself from the slow trickle of time working its way through my own personal hourglass.

So after the bitter disappointment that was Phantom Menace, let’s crack on with Attack of the Clones shall we?

Set 10 years after the events of Phantom Menace, Attack of the Clones opens with rumours of a separatist movement threatening to break up the Senate. Meanwhile a plot is underway to assassinate former Queen and current Senator Padmé Amidala (Natalie Portman). Anakin (Hayden Christensen) is given an assignment to protect her whilst Obi-Wan goes searching for a mysterious bounty hunter.

I realise these reviews are now going to start resembling the story of a failed relationship; the kind where it all starts off wonderfully and then half way through something awful happens and you should have ended it but you carry on because you thought maybe it was a one off and eventually it all goes horribly wrong and you’re left alone, crying, sitting in your pyjamas for an entire weekend, surviving off wine and Cookie Dough Ice Cream eaten straight from the tub… or at least that’s how I imagine that relationships break down, because that’s obviously never happened to me…

I went into Attack of the Clones thinking that maybe it would be better than the last one. How foolish I was.

It’s actually fitting that there’s a protracted scene on a factory conveyor belt towards the end because that’s exactly how this films feels like it was put together; on an assembly line. I can practically see them with a list of stuff they have to include; forced friendship, tedious romance, obligatory space fight and a metric fuck tonne of lightsabres.

In the entire 2 hours 20 minutes of the movie, evidence of Obi-Wan and Anakin’s friendship never materialises. All they have is that scene in the lift where they joke (I use the term in it’s loosest sense…) about falling in “a nest of Gundarks” and from then on all they do is bitch about each other for the duration of the movie. How is this helping to engross us in their plight when all they do is whinge about each other for the whole film?!

The cast are, again, on universal poor form. At least Ewan McGregor is marginally less dick-ish than last time and when he is he has a reason to because Anakin’s a prick. The casting of Samuel L Jackson was a ridiculous decision, whoever thought of casting the man who excels in OTT, borderline batshit roles as the calm, collected Mace Windu clearly owes everyone an apology.

In the spirit of fairness I must admit I enjoyed some of the action scenes. The flying chase around Coruscant, the coliseum scene, they’re fun. The coliseum in particular, where Padmé, Obi-Wan and Anakin are handcuffed and chained to columns, I really liked.  Padmé got to show that she can handle herself and the Jedi’s were forced to evade beasties without the use of their lightsabres. I like that, I wish there was more of that, that’s what makes it such a shame when they bottle it and turn the remainder of the scene into a lightsabre orgy.

And now onto the ill-fated romance on which so much of the Vader lore hangs. I struggle to think of a less convincing screen couple than Natalie Portman and Hayden Christensen, if it was possible to have minus screen chemistry these guys would be at about -273.15°c. Absolute fucking zero. But they’re two attractive humans frolicking in a beautiful green-screen field, so in Lucas’s mind that passes for love.

Aside from the fact they both look like Topshop models why exactly are they ‘in love’? Anakin gives off nothing but creeper vibes from the start of the film. “I don’t think she liked me watching her” OF COURSE SHE DIDN’T! YOU’RE CREEPY AS FUCK! Then there’s his constant bitching about his mentor, undermining of Amidala’s plans for her own security, endorsement of fascist dictatorships, batshit Tuskan murder sprees and all-round general twattery.

But she’s equally weird, what’s with her protestations that she can’t be with him because she’s a Senator? Are Senators celibate in this universe too? Is ANYONE allowed to have sex in this galaxy?!?! And lest we forget Padmé’s stone cold delivery of “I truly deeply love you”… actually, he’s a sociopath and she’s human beige, maybe Lucas was right, they belong together.

Not to get too first-world-problemsey on you but I really struggled to write this one. It took me three sittings to watch the film (I’ve done all the others in 1) and when it came down to it I couldn’t bring myself to write it up, hence why this is almost two weeks late. I’m not one of those people who delight in tearing a film to shreds; movies make me happier than any other art form. If I’m at the pictures or at home I love the ritual of getting your sundries, sitting down and devoting yourself to a film for two hours. I couldn’t do that with Attack of the Clones. I’d start with the best of intentions but it felt like it was draining me, like a cinematic Dementor.

One more to go before The Force Awakens. I find it difficult to see how you could disappoint me Abrams, if all you have to do is be better than the prequels, the bar is so very, very low…

Final Thoughts 1: Have I missed something or was it ever established why Jedi’s can’t have a love life? I always thought they were all like mediaeval knights (you know, because Jedi KNIGHTS) rather than monks…

Final Thoughts 2: How, after the events of episode 1, is Nute Gunray not in prision, let alone in charge of important senate shit?!?!

Surprise Discovery: It’s ok Rose Byrne, don’t worry Joel Edgerton, you’ll both go on to do far better things.

Goodbye till next time :-)

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BlogAlongAStarWars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace

Hello :-)

Here we are again for the fourth instalment of my attempt at The Incredible Suit’s BlogAlongAStarWars; My ongoing quest to become a Star Wars fan and distract myself from the realisation that with every second I am edging closer towards oblivion.

I'm not going to pretend that I don’t know the prequels have a reputation; of course I do, I'm a human who has spent time on the internet. However, as with the original trilogy, I haven’t seen these films for years, so I don’t properly understand why there’s such disdain for them.

The story centres around tax disputes between the Galactic republic and the Trade federation. Jedi Qui-Gon-Jinn (Liam Neeson) and Obi-Wan Kenobi (Ewan McGregor) are sent in to negotiate with both parties but things soon take a turn for the worse and they’re on the run. The Jedi hot tail it to Naboo, save Queen Amidala (Natalie Portman) from kidnap then, after they’re attacked trying to leave the planet, end up on Tatooine where they meet young slave Anakin Skywalker (Jake Lloyd) who may be the answer to all of their problems.

Let’s not mince our words, any way you slice it Phantom Menace isn’t great. As a standalone film it’s boring and when compared to the original trilogy it fails on almost every level. It is not, however, completely without merit.

The trouble is we get off on the wrong foot and the film never really recovers from there. The iconic scrolling text is babbling on about taxation which no one, especially the children in the audience, gives a shit about. Then, in the first scene of the movie, Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan whip their lightsabres out quicker than a flasher with his wang. As exciting as that is (the lightsabres not the wang), you can’t escape the fact that this is the opposite to everything we’ve been taught about being a Jedi up to this point.

One of the biggest issues in Phantom Menace is the absence of a main character. This is talked about far better than I could in the infamous Red Letter Media reviews and by the brilliant Michael Barryte at Belated Media; all logic indicates that our lead should be Obi-Wan because that character is the bridge between trilogies. However I’m kind of glad it isn’t because in Phantom he’s an absolute prick. I have an awful lot of time for Ewan McGregor but his character was written terribly, he’s mean with a complete lack of humour. “Why do I sense we’ve picked up another pathetic lifeform?” WHAT?! You’re talking about a child! Stop being a knobhead Obi-Wan!

In fact all of the characters are pitched so weirdly. The acting is uniformly terrible. It’s almost like a weird absurdist art piece because no one reacts to anything in the way and normal person would. Every plot point is met with nothing but solemnity with the exception of the very end where they have a party and Amidala gives Brian Blessed Gungan one of those Plasma Balls you get from gadget shops or Argos.

Qui-Gon has got to be the most un-Jedi Jedi in the history of Jedis. He’s a compulsive gambler and has the oddest way of setting peoples mind at ease. When Anakin asks him about his “laser sword” (fuck off Lucas, you’ve made enough money off their bastard merchandising you can at least take the time to remember they’re called Lightsabres) he says “maybe I killed a Jedi and took it from him” which is such a bizarre statement to make on so many different levels it would take a whole other blog post to adequately explain it.

Please bear in mind, I’m not levelling this criticism at the actors themselves, they have all gone on to prove themselves as exceptional performers in other films more deserving of their talents (except poor Jake Lloyd who, by his own admission, had such an awful time with Phantom Menace that, save for one film in 2005, he hasn’t been lured back to the silver screen since). No, the fault lies at the door of the atrocious script, piss poor directorial choices and the fact that there were many creative professionals in this team who just sat back and watched the proverbial car crash unfold without doing a thing to stop it.

One genuinely positive moment is the podrace. Gleefully lifted from Ben Hur it’s shiny and fun, it looks and sounds great; it feels like it’s accidentally been spliced in from some other movie, one that has a sense of adventure. It’s hard to justify such an extensive use of greenscreen but the Pod race nearly does… nearly.

It’s always fun to explore new worlds and we’re given that opportunity in Phantom Menace. Obviously we’ve seen Tatooine before but Naboo is the first city civilisation we get to seen and, although I’m not a fan of the wall to wall greenscreen, I like the idea. I particularly like the Gungan underwater city. I’m not a fan of the Gungans, especially not Jar Jar, but it’s in keeping with the extreme terrain that inspired the likes of Tatooine and Hoth and it looks good. It struck me as odd that Amidala wasn’t set up to be the ruler of Alderaan though, I mean we all know who her daughter is and it might have made sense to make us care about a planet and it’s inhabitants if you’re going to blow it up in a later episode but I realise this is a tiny niggle in a film with far bigger problems.

Speaking of Naboo, where are all these dying Nabooians (Nabooeans? Nabooese? Nabooish?). Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want to see bodies in the street or anything but there’s just very little evidence that this is a life or death situation. You've managed to get on and off that planet several times so what exactly is this blockade doing? You appear to have plenty of water and land to grow your own food so what is it that that you need to trade so desperately? I don’t want to get all ‘Keep Calm and Carry On’ on you but it seems like you could sustain yourselves quite well if you really wanted to.

If there was ever going to be a character to rival Vader in terms of pure aesthetic awesome it’s Darth Maul. The character design of Darth Maul is perfect. The robes, the face, the double ended lightsabre. With Ray Park’s physicality and Peter Serafinowicz’s awesomely creepy vocal performance, he was all set up to be this imposing force across the prequels with his and Sidious’s relationship mirroring that of Vader and Palpatine.

So why oh why did he have to die?!?!

This is, for me, the biggest mistake Lucas makes in Phantom, maybe even across all of the prequels. So much wasted potential, it almost hurts me to think about it. The lovely Ryan Lambie explains it better than I ever could so just read that and pretend I was clever enough to write it, yeah? Cheers.

The fatal flaw in all of this is just how much the film takes for granted. It takes it for granted that you’re so excited to see lightsabres again you won’t care that what the characters are doing directly contradicts what we’ve previously been told, it takes it for granted that we know who Anakin will become and assumes this will automatically make us care about him, it takes it for granted that we love R2D2 and C3PO so much that we’ll ignore that they have no reason to be here,  it takes for granted that our fondness for Obi Wan means we’ll ignore his dickish behaviour, it takes it for granted that we’ll accept toys and computer trickery over actual substance.

It’s hard to separate out feelings of disappointment from legitimate criticism which is why I think some people are so harsh on Phantom Menace, but it really isn’t all bad. Having said that, what it is is a predominantly soulless, lightsabre happy, beige wall of a film. It has it’s redeeming qualities in the shape of the Pod race and (up until the point he’s sliced in twain) Darth Maul but by and large it’s just too dull to care about and from the poor choices that plague the film, it’s evident that the film makers certainly don’t care either.

I am really, really not looking forward to next month…

Final Thoughts 1: “A communications disruption can mean only one thing… invasion”. Or you’ve ran out of data, or you haven’t paid the phone bill, or someone knocked the plug out. I mean on this occasion it does mean invasion but frankly that was a lucky guess.

Final Thoughts 2: Padmé’s decoy is a bit ballsy isn't she? I mean she orders real Padmé to go and clean R2D2, I wouldn’t order my boss to clean a jumped up pedal bin, even if I was pretending to be her…

Final Thoughts 3: I'm just going to sit here and point out the MASSIVE ANAKIN/JESUS PARALLEL that crops up and then is NEVER SPOKEN OF AGAIN (like so many other things… COUGHmidichloriansCOUGH).

Final Thoughts 4: All Hyperdrives are bollocks. They all break all the time, the people in charge of travel in the Star Wars universe need to come up with something more dependable because it’s getting ridiculous.

Surprise Discovery: Is that..? IT IS! It IS Celia Imrie!

Goodbye till next time :-)

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PS: I didn’t want to write about this with the rest of my waffle, but as a result of watching the Red Letter Media review I watched The Beginning: Making Star Wars Episode I The Phantom Menace. Watching it after the event is a strangely eerie experience. I realise it might be painful for some but I think it’s well worth a watch, if only to see exactly where the train derailed.

Straight Outta Compton Review

Hello :-)

Biopics are an interesting beast. They’ll always have an audience so long as their subject does and, unlike a documentary, they have license to embellish the truth or omit some less than savoury incidents. Most recently I went to see the NWA biopic Straight Outta Compton.

Straight Outta Compton is the story of the formation of and subsequent demise of NWA in the late 80’s/early 90’s. With the combined forces of Eazy-E (Jason Mitchell), Dr Dre (Corey Hawkins), Ice Cube (played by Ice Cube’s real life son, O’Shea Jackson Jr) and the management of Jerry Heller (Paul Giamatti), the collective soon achieve fame and notoriety across the US.

I’m fairly familiar with the goings on of NWA, even so I was surprised by just how much was packed into the 10 year span of the film. So much ground is covered there’s very little time to go into detail about anything meaning Straight Outta Compton feels more like an abridged revision guide rather than a comprehensive study, nonetheless it is highly entertaining.

The film is clearly divisible into three acts, all of which vary in quality. The first chronicles the formation, recording of the titular album and the band going on tour; this is where the film is at its finest. The scene setting of life in late 80’s Compton is really effective and the pervasive subjugation of African American communities is more than a little resonant in light of recent events in the US. An encounter with the LAPD prompting Ice Cube to pen the infamous protest song Fuck tha Police and the unsanctioned performance of the song at a gig in Detroit carry the illicit thrill of defiance coupled with shots of hotel room parties and the band mucking about in the recording studio makes for some wonderful stuff. It’s so difficult to capture the joy of music on screen and make it feel authentic but this first section does just that.

The second act of the film, post-Ice Cube’s departure from NWA, is where things shift down a gear. The focus moves from the music to contract disputes and bitterness at members leaving the band. There are some moments that recapture some of that first act energy, most of which feature Jackson Jr’s Ice Cube; the recording of the blistering diss track No Vaseline and the scene where Cube takes a baseball bat to one of the offices of Priority Records are both pulse raisers but they’re nearly buried in the dull and vague legal back and forth that dominates the middle of the film.

The final section focuses partly on the deterioration of Eazy-E, his tragic diagnosis of AIDs and also on Dr Dre’s increasingly fraught relationship with Suge Knight and Death Row Records. There is an element of Where’s Wally that creeps into this final act when Dr Dre collaborators start popping up like Snoop Dogg and Tupac (Keith Stanfield and Marcc Rose doing great jobs of looking like and, particularly in Stanfield’s case, sounding like, their respective artists) but that fun is brought to a swift end thanks to R. Marcos Taylor’s Suge Knight. He cuts a terrifying shape and his scenes of brutality and intimidation and legitimately hard to watch.

However the bulk of the last act narrative is handed over to the decline of Eazy-E, the scenes of which have been accused of being overly sentimental. I’m not sure when sentimental became a dirty word but I’m not convinced it should be. Jason Mitchell does wonderful work as Eazy-E and there’s nothing wrong with feeling sad when such a well realised character faces such tragedy. There is a palpable sense of regret and loss in these scenes that I think is really well handled.

What’s a little disappointing is how much of a hagiography Straight Outta Compton turns into. The band are never depicted as totally saintly but some of the more pernicious aspects of the group’s history are glossed over or omitted entirely. Even some of the less controversial but more interesting events are left out to make way for more scenes of contract litigation, which is a shame.

It looks brilliantly stylish. I’ve never been a particular fan of F Gary Gray’s work but it's a confidently helmed picture. For the most part Gray balances humour, drama and a good dose of action. It's a credit to him that he's been able to make someone rapping in a recording booth such an engaging thing to watch.

The film’s cast is one of it’s great strengths. Paul Giamatti adds to his repertoire of arsehole music managers with Jerry Heller. He could have played Heller with a striped top, mask and swag bag but his staunch defence of NWA and seemingly genuine appreciation of their music adds real intrigue and WTF-ness to his character’s motives.

DJ Yella, MC Ren and The D.O.C are somewhat side-lined from proceedings but Neil Brown Jr, Aldis Hodge and Marlon Yates Jr all make the most of the screen time they have. The central trio of Hawkins, Mitchell and Jackson are the ones that do the most heavy lifting. The camera loves Corey Hawkins and his performance as Dr Dre has charisma by the bucket load. Aside from looking uncannily like his Father, O’Shea Jackson Jr channels the requisite energy, frustration and creativity of someone who undeniably changed the musical landscape of the late 20th Century.

I am a fan of NWA so I realise that this film was engineered for me to like it but the story is such that Straight Outta Compton could easily be enjoyed by someone who isn’t as well versed in their work. It’s a unashamed celebration of everything NWA stood for and although the film sags in the middle it pulls it back for a genuinely tender finale. Straight Outta Compton may not be a warts and all exposé but it has at it’s heart a love of the music NWA made and for that I loved it.

Goodbye till next time!
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BlogAlongAStarWars: Episode VI – Return of the Jedi

Hello :-)

I’m back again for The Incredible Suit’s BlogAlongAStarWars part trois. My own account of the ongoing quest to become a proper Star Wars fan and crush the oncoming tidal wave of adult life by revisiting all the Star Wars movies in the run up to Episode 7, this most recent of posts which is absolutely definitely not late and absolutely didn’t need to have been posted by the end of August…

So here ends my look back at the original trilogy. Again, I haven’t re-watched episodes IV – VI for years but thus far I’ve thoroughly enjoyed getting to know these much loved films as an adult and letting them batter down my snarky and jaded defences.

In episode VI we discover that the Galactic Empire, under orders from Human Mole-Rat Emperor Palpatine, are building a second Death Star so they can crush the Rebel Alliance once and for all. Meanwhile Luke Skywalker, C3PO and R2D2 set in motion a plan to rescue Han Solo who is still encased in carbonite and hanging on the wall at Jabba the Hutt’s lair.

This film had me from the off. Bad-ass music *tick* iconic scrolling opening *tick* and then a ruddy excellent rescue *tick tick tick*. I love a good heist but (puts on M&S advert voice) this isn’t just a heist, this a bonkers Space Opera heist. The whole sequence is tremendous fun, the call back to “I Love you/I know” was super cute, I love that this is the first time Luke seems like a proper Jedi, it’s just an all-round good time.

Here’s a potentially controversial statement: I don’t understand the appeal of Boba Fett. I know he’s supposed to be this great man of mystery and intrigue but I’m just not seeing it. To me he hasn’t done enough to justify the esteem in which his character is held and when he’s accidentally knocked into the giant sand vagina I gave zero shits.

For a film series that has thus far stayed away from massive exposition dumps it is a little disappointing that when we get back to Dagobah, after Yoda sadly shuffles off this mortal coil, the ghost of Obi Wan has to show up and explain everything. This isn’t the worst offender I’ve ever seen but it did feel as though Lucas wrote himself into a corner and then decided to Force feed the audience (Geddit?!?! FORCE feed… because it’s Star Wars… and the Force… oh fine be like that…) some piffle, albeit piffle delivered by the legendary Alec Guinness, in order to work his way out of it. I’m not saying that this is an omen of things to come but it absolutely is.

Then we move to Endor. I don’t hate the Ewoks as much as most (they gave us Warwick Davis and he is a goddamn legend) but I will concede that they are narratively unnecessary and conspicuously commercially lucrative. We’ve already established that this is a David and Goliath space parable; you don’t need a physical representation in the form of tiny bears fighting massive Stormtroopers.  Also, I know everyone says Ewoks are just children’s toys but let’s not forget they did want to eat Han Solo. Like actually EAT him…

Then everything comes to a head in the final act and it’s glorious. The rebel strike team try and take the Endor base, the X-Wings are sent to take down the Death Star, Luke goes mano a mano with his Daddy and Admiral Ackbar utters the line that spawned a thousand memes. Each of these showdowns matter and the cutting between the three of them is done really nicely, enough to keep us engaged but not manic enough to confuse us.

Each individual finale fight matters but the battle between Vader and Luke is the one with the biggest emotional heft and brilliantly done it is too. We all know that Luke isn’t really going to turn but when he lets rip on Vader he proper goes for it and it has all the drama you’d expect from such an anticipated fight.

Maybe it all wraps itself up rather fluffily and a bit too nicely but by this point I don’t really mind. The redemption of Vader, Luke’s transition to fully fledged Jedi, Leia and Han’s happily ever after, it’s full on fairytale ending stuff which , as a life-long Disney fan, I am not one to shy away from.

So everyone is happy, we’ve got fireworks and dancing Ewoks; but then, looking like the creepiest creeper who ever creeped, Hayden Christensen’s ghostly figure appears like the Ghost of Special Editions Present. Aside from the fact that this makes no sense (I’m not accepting Lucas’s retcon bullshit about how he’s “returned to his inner persona”, how would Luke even know who he is? He’s only ever seen his Father as an old man?! Poor Sebastian Shaw…), it is a painful reminder of what I have in store over the next three months.

George Lucas’s ridiculous changes aside, I get Star Wars now. I understand the affection; the characters are joyous, I agree with the consensus that Episode V is the best one and if Lightsabers were real I would absolutely want one. So let us soldier on dear reader and you can watch as the prequels shit all over my new found love... *sigh*

Final Thoughts: (This is pretty much exactly what I did at the end of Return of the Jedi) 

‘I wonder if there’s any other original trilogy stuff I can look at before I have to start on the prequels…’

*takes to the interwebs*

‘Ooooh ‘Star Wars Holiday Special’ that might be worth a look...’

*10 minutes later*

‘What the actual FUCK…’

Surprise Discovery: I completely forgot about the suggestion that Leia has powers too. Fingers crossed that’s something we get to see in Episode VII!

Goodbye till next time :-)

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