four words

revenge

of

the

sith

So about 28 years ago or so and I was 15 years old, or as the obits like to say, AGED 15 years (ah, like a nice cheese, no?) setting inside the Monroeville Mall Cinema  or something or other about to see the bottom of a giant starship fly so awfully close and horizontally across my field of vision AND nary did I think, of course, that almost 30 years later I'd be seein the end, or the end of the middle, or episode III of that same story with my own son in the Jack London cinemagoogleplex in Oakland, CA and be so happy about it all. It's just good to see some shit wrapped up. Wanted to know. Wanted to know how the f Vader got inside that suit. How he fathered two squeaky clean lil hero children, when did he get his own theme music?

We didn't wonder, "why was Darth Vader so angry?" "What made him tick?" That wasn't a consideration. He was evil. He fulfilled the evil role in the film. That's it. Didn't need no more than that. You had your good guys and bad guys and we just wanted to seem them fly around and zap shit and aliens and all the cool shit that Star Wars was: mainly eye candy and excitement.  But Lucas sowed the seeds of his own ruination of course. He figgered out how to make shit look really real and with computers and all and eventually we had literally SEEN IT ALL an become jaded fucks who were craving a... a... story! Didn't matter how spectacular, how giant a planet, how many cities lit up at night, how many angles and near misses your Jedi or asteroid and giant horizontal starship zip and zim around.  No more gawking at the "Imperial Walkers," the hover bikes, the stylin' little crafts that made so great a zing zing zing sound. All done. Seen all the Wookies and Jar Jars we could see as well. So now what? I guess a story with some freakin' character development had to be told.

As they like to nail into your head in MFA writing programs across the galaxies closer to home: sometimes it is good to have a character who goes through a change. Grapples, struggles. Changes.  We like that kind of shit.  And I'll give 'em credit for that. Took 30 years and six movies and a gigantic fuckload of money, but at least they took a stab at character dev.. Not a real sophisticated stab, but coupled with all the iconography, and mythology and crap made for a decent flick and answered some nagging questions.

Other things I thought during Episode Tres:

Wasn't Yoda a muppet back in '77? Now he's Mr. CG, and now we know, don't get him mad. Nothing worse than a mad Yoda, cause he will whup your ass. He couldn't whup nobody's ass back when he was a muppet, but now, sheeeet.

Light saber work has evolved into a wildly spinning affair. Twirling light sabers were probably technically impossible back in like the PUNK ROCK days O' '77, when the best they could do was like CLASH the lights together and you'd get that fantastic light saber grating sound. Now? Twirl away boys, shit, you can even twirl two or four of 'em if you want, the computers will take care of all that.

Mr. Kenobi. My man, Ewan, what is with the freakish COMBED hair all the time? I mean, you got your rustic, ascetic Jedi robe, your rough-hewn Jedi shirt and tunic and whatnot, so what's with the ultra-groomed like 1976 Vitalis style? A bit unnerving to me.

I'm not complaining about this movie. I liked it. Keep 'em coming if you can.