 |
Wednesday, May 18, 2005 |
From Ed Harter's Village Voice article, "May the Force Be Over."
Anakin's defection from Jediism to Sithdom should provide the film's
backbone, but neither the script nor Christensen delivers the needed
nuance. "If you are not with me, then you're my enemy," warns the newly
minted Darth Vader to his mentor Obi-Wan Kenobi (the still respectable Ewan
McGregor). "Only a Sith deals in absolutes," Kenobi counters. Attendees at
the New York preview screening responded with cheers, taking the exchange
as a blatant Bush bash, but the line also betrays the failure of Lucas to
portray the elder Skywalker's moral downslide with anything close to
complexity; indeed, the underlying premise of Jedi-Sith duality rests on a
fairy-tale Manichaeanism of unpolluted good versus total evil. Convinced to
join the dark side in hopes of gaining new powers that will save Padmé from
a prophesied death, Anakin thus transforms schizophrenically from
broodingly ambitious knight to bloodthirsty killer once he has crossed the
line. No wonder the film's space battles still echo nothing more modern
than World War II naval combat; the Star Wars cycle remains in a
comfortable fantasyland of melodramatic moral choices and unambiguous
military tactics. The messy asymmetry of 21st-century warfare has no place
in Lucas's retro future.
10:28:29 PM  | |
|
|
If you like snark in your critical reviews, this well written New Yorker review of Revenge of the Sith is for you!
Some of my favorite lines:
"Sith. What kind of a word is that? Sith. It sounds to me like the noise that emerges when you block one nostril and blow through the other...."
"What can you say about a civilization where people zip from one solar system to the next as if they were changing their socks but where a woman fails to register for an ultrasound, and thus to realize that she is carrying twins until she is about to give birth? Mind you, how Padmé got pregnant is anybody’s guess, although I’m prepared to wager that it
involved Anakin nipping into a broom closet with a warm glass jar and a copy of Ewok Babes. "
"The general opinion of "Revenge of the Sith" seems to be that it marks a distinct improvement on the last two episodes, "The Phantom Menace" and "Attack of the Clones." True, but only in the same way that dying from
natural causes is preferable to crucifixion."
10:23:31 PM | |
|
|
|
|
