Monday, May 23, 2005

Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith

Yesterday I contributed to the $20 billion asset of Mr. George Lucas by watching the "Revenge of the Sith" in the theatre. Yes, it is sad that it is already available for download on the P2P networks. The movie, like any other Hollywood sci-fi movie of recent times surprises the viewer by the scale. Everything is big.

I have never watched any of the 5 other movies. Yet I kind of liked this one. I guess I could still follow the movie because the plot was pretty thin and simple. Something hard-core star-wars fans would not like. Andy had told me at the beginning of the movie that people with white or green swords (oops... they are called sabres) are the good ones and with red swords are the bad ones. That really helped me sort the characters out in the first 20 minutes of the movie.

Things I liked about the movie:

  1. Sanskrit like grammar in sentences of Master Yoda.
  2. Names of all the characters. Obi-Wan Kenobi, Anakin SkyWalker, Darth Vader, Yoda... The last time I liked the names of the characters was when I saw "The Mask of Zorro".
  3. Concept of the Dark Side and people siding with that. Seems so similar to never ending clashes between dev and danavs in Indian Mythology.
  4. Sunset (Sun like star set) scene where Padme is looking at the Jedi temple from her pent-house.
  5. Varied Landscapes - Anikin's house was in a sky-scraper. While the place where General Grievous was hiding was like deep Africa... Some war scenes seemed to be copied (at least locations) from Saving Private Ryan. The Lava planet and so on...
  6. Security system in Jedi temple which had hologram re-play. Proves the point again that no matter how strong your fire-wall is... it can not stop physical brute-force attack.

Things I did not like:

  1. Vague ending... Can not say who won or who lost.
  2. Dull humor. Seems like somebody is trying to hard.
  3. Some part of the movie was slow.
  4. Un-necessary dinosaur like animal that Obi rides before killing General Grievous
  5. Words like "republic", "congress" also being used even long long ago in a far far galaxy.
  6. Predictable story line. I am seeing any STAR-WARS movie for the first time... but as soon as Padme wanted to tell something important to Anikin, I guessed that she must have been pregnant. Also, when Palpatine asks Anikin to kill Count Duku, even though he is a Jedi - his Sith worthy intentions were made pretty obvious.

Overall it is a nice movie. But is it worth all the hype?? I guess not. It has definitely made me want to see the other 5 movies.