With the arrival of Star Wars: The Clone Wars in theaters (which I’ve still yet to see) I thought it a good opportunity to revisit the first part of Lucas’ space epic.
As I worked through The Phantom Menace, Attack of the Clones and then Revenge of the Sith (with the first animated Clone Wars series in between the last two) I found the biggest change is a gradual diminishing of unnecessary moments in each consecutive film. Where Menace is filled with shots that serve no discernible purpose, Sith is pretty tight from a story-telling point of view. We aren’t subjected to many useless shots of a character looking from one side of the frame to the next, and the camera doesn’t linger upon the glory of Lucas’ CGI creations as it so often does in the first movie.
It’s impossible, even if you’re like me and are willing to forgive a lot as I am, to not be occasionally taken out of the moment by the hammy bits of dialogue and instances of wooden acting that litter the films. But even with those roadblocks in place the trilogy probably isn’t as bad as most people would have you think. It’s simply impossible to feel about a movie at age 30 the same way you did when you were seven. And that reality has done a lot of damage to a set of movies that, really, aren’t as bad as they’ve been made out to be.
posted on Wednesday, August 27, 2008 6:01 PM by ChrisThilk
