Sci-Fi Storm

Without anything earth-shattering news-wise to report, I’ll add another review: this past weekend I caught Star Wars Episode II in digital. In brief – it wasn’t quite as bad as the critics made it out to be, but there were some moments that just didn’t work, like the scene someone likened to The Sound of Music. Read More for details. Be forewarned of possible spoilers.

First off, the digital projection was awesome. I was half expecting to see “artifacts” and pixellation, as some of my friends had, but they must have had a bum projector, as I saw ZERO flaws.

In terms of the movie itself, I thought it was very well done for what it was. You have to remember – we KNOW what happens by the end of Episode III. Sometimes that spoils things – they want to be surprised. They don’t enjoy the “trip” – how they get there – otherwise.

I saw the first movie as a “character establishment” movie. Basically, here are the major players – Anakin, Obi-Wan, Amidala, Palpatine, etc. Here is the Jedi Council. Here is just how big the Republic is (thousands of systems!!!)

The second movie is the first “movement” of the story line, but mostly in establishing the plot – Anakin is very angry, the Jedi are powerful but short in number, the love affair between Anakin and Amidala, someone is trying to create a huge army, Palpatine is given emergency powers – all still creating the foundation for the events of Episode III. We also see more “minor” characters that if we’ve paid attention to the original trilogy we KNOW they will be involved later (Owen Lars, Bail Organa, etc.)

As for Episode II itself, there are only two main gripes I had: the love scenes. Not entirely…the biggest one I had a problem with was the “running through the grass, surfing on the whatever-it-was” scene. I just can’t see Lucas doing love scenes. I don’t recall any decent one of the few-if-any attempts in his other movies. There had to be an establishment of the romance – it just didn’t seem to work here.

There is more room for inconsitancies. For instance, take the whole clones vs. droids thing. The clones are obviously the forerunners of the Imperial Stormtroopers, yet they are fighting with the Jedi (with the Council’s reluctance) against the droid army nominally under the command of Count Dooku, who’s “master” is Darth Sidious. Now, I don’t want to spoil things for anyone who hasn’t figured things out, but either this is a major inconsistancy or someone is playing both sides…we’ll see if it pans out.

The fight scenes for the post part were visually impressive, although I swear some of the mass fighting scenes invovled the Jedi just waving lightsabers back and forth without any style. I’d have to watch it again to be sure. Certainly all the visuals were top notch.

Count Dooku didn’t impress me acting wise. I don’t know why – it just didn’t click I guess. Not convincing, not ominous enough at the end, I don’t know. But getting to see Yoda kick some but was fun.

I think they could have played the Boba/Jango Fett angle better. You know Boba is going to be bitter of the Jedi, and of Windu particularly, but something seemed lacking.

Overall a pretty good movie. Not top notch, but good. 3.5 out 5 five, um…I should come up with something catchy…Sols? Orbits? Rockets? Any ideas?