This Is A Day That Will Be Long Remembered
In the immortal words of Lord Vader (SW EP IV: A New Hope) "This is a day that will be long remembered", for it has seen the release of Episode III, the final instalment in the Star Wars saga. I elected not to attend one of those 12:01 am screenings for the die-hards and settled for the more leisurely 3:30 pm session, which ended up pretty full for a weekday matinee. But I still got a good seat in the center back row.
I'm still sort of digesting the film so haven't really drawn any definite conclusions other than it is not as some have said the greatest of the six movies; Empire still sets the standard in that regard. It most resembles Attack of the Clones mostly in terms of sets and a certain feeling of sensory overload. There are just so many battles, chases, explosions, fire, etc that you feel like you are not watching a story so much as a series of CGI scripts. The highlights are as ever the light saber duels, and there are more of them than in the other Star Wars films.
The pacing of the film suffered from a relatively slow first half, which then accelerated a little too quickly in the second half. Fortunately there was a reduction in some of the appalling dialogue reminiscent of EPI & EPII, but there was still some particularly in the Anakin-Padme storyline.
After I got out of the cinemas it was raining and relatively cold. As if in some strange way commemorating this momentous day, there had been a hail/frost storm of such magnitude that the ground along the river bank & particularly in my suburb was covered in so much ice it looked like snow and the carpark in the local shopping centre was flooded too. I think this is probably a fairly rare event for a sub-tropical city. Walking back home I saw dense fog leading up the street which looked eerily like the foggy dark street in the "Exorcist". As I trod on the ice I was surrounded by the strong scent of eucalyptus from the leaves that had been scattered on the road by the hail.
I'm still sort of digesting the film so haven't really drawn any definite conclusions other than it is not as some have said the greatest of the six movies; Empire still sets the standard in that regard. It most resembles Attack of the Clones mostly in terms of sets and a certain feeling of sensory overload. There are just so many battles, chases, explosions, fire, etc that you feel like you are not watching a story so much as a series of CGI scripts. The highlights are as ever the light saber duels, and there are more of them than in the other Star Wars films.
The pacing of the film suffered from a relatively slow first half, which then accelerated a little too quickly in the second half. Fortunately there was a reduction in some of the appalling dialogue reminiscent of EPI & EPII, but there was still some particularly in the Anakin-Padme storyline.
After I got out of the cinemas it was raining and relatively cold. As if in some strange way commemorating this momentous day, there had been a hail/frost storm of such magnitude that the ground along the river bank & particularly in my suburb was covered in so much ice it looked like snow and the carpark in the local shopping centre was flooded too. I think this is probably a fairly rare event for a sub-tropical city. Walking back home I saw dense fog leading up the street which looked eerily like the foggy dark street in the "Exorcist". As I trod on the ice I was surrounded by the strong scent of eucalyptus from the leaves that had been scattered on the road by the hail.
posted by Dr. Kananga at 9:30 PM
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