Monday, May 23, 2005

Star Wars Episode III Review

Okay, I'll jump on the bandwagon here. Ergo, everyone else is seeing it and talking about it. Here's my unbiased opinion: Great movie!

It's not about what people think, however.

It's often believed that the movies are about Luke and Leia and the defeat of Vader. Or, they believe it's about the Force and all that it entails. But in the context of the entire set of six movies, it's blindingly apparent that the movies are about Anakin, his transformation to an agent of Evil and his ultimate conversion back to Good. A last-minute, death-bed conversion, to be sure, but certainly a conversion, nonetheless.

I suppose it was too late for him to do anything about it, once converted.

There are problems with the movie. One of my friends verbalized it before I did: How come they have all this technology, including the ability to create fully-functional mechanical limbs for people but they can't tell that Leia (EDIT-Correction: Amidalah! Jeez.) is carrying twins until the last minute? Obi-Wan's ghost said in Ep V that he was trained by Yoda but in Ep I it was obvious that he was trained by Qui-Gon. Things like that.

Purely incidental.

I'm concerned about more important problems with the movie, like why can't the Jedi council figure out that when the prophecy said Anakin would bring balance to the Force, it didn't mean he was going to eliminate evil. It meant that he would balance the Force. Yoda came close when he said, "Unless misread the prophecy we have."

The Jedi were too prevalent, even arrogant. Certainly too strong. The Force was over-balanced on the good side. The prophecy meant that the Jedi needed a swift kick in the butt by an agent of evil which, of course, Anakin/Vader fulfilled nicely. After everything was kicked over to the evil, dark side of the force, it went a little too far in that direction. Lo and behold, Anakin's heir rose to the occasion and brought everything back toward the good side. At that point, however, there are no longer any bad guys, only one good guy (two if you count Leia) and a long road ahead before the Jedi councils are rebuilt.

I haven't read the books so maybe some of this conjecture resides therein.

But bear in mind, the six movies are a story of Anakin, the main character throughout. All of the movies focus and refocus on him.

Come to think of it, the ONLY two other characters who are even in all of the six movies are R2-D2 and C-3P0.

Cool.

--Wag--

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Uh, it was Amadala who had the twins. Leia was one of the twins. :-)

Thanks for your commentary. My 14 year old loves Star Wars. I'll point out to him what you had to say.

Anonymous said...

Personally I do not mind the focus on Anakin one little bit.
;o)