George Lucas drops his yellow writing tablet
and Number 2 pencil. He kneels before a huge, multi-armed
GCI monster with dollar bills clasped tightly in every fist.

LUCAS
(eyes mist up)
What have I done?

DARTH CGI
You are fulfilling your destiny.
From this day forth you will
call all Star Wars movies 'episodes'.

LUCAS
I'll pledge myself to the CGI.
Anything to save the franchise.

DARTH CGI
Raise my slave. Go. Destroy
the Original Trilogy with the
ILM department. Do what must
be done to get paid!


Hooded, robed George Lucas walks with a group of ILM workers behind him.



Is it me or did this film just feel...flat? Maybe it's me. Maybe it was the hype. Or maybe, like many others, this film did nothing for me. I had more fun after the movie in the parking lot where six of us played with our $20 Wal-Mart light sabers and talked about how flat the acting was and how dry the overall plot had been.

A friend paid for my ticket because he wanted all of us to see it as a group. Yes, we had more fun after the movie than in the theater listening to earsplitting booms and odiously monotonous dialogue that desperately tries to tie together two films (Sith and the original 1977 release) that had nothing creatively to do with each other. A few months from now, when the Star Wars fever dies down, people will realize that they've been had...again. Star Wars is like a inadequate org*sm. Work up to it, it comes and then it goes. Then it's all a matter of how much people are willing to pay or what they are willing to do to get that feeling again.


This topic and many others can be disputed at the Star Wars official website on the message boards where tens of thousands of fans and un-fans can waist their time and money babbling on about potholes and plot mistakes and have their messages flooded off the board and/or have their threads locked by storm trooper moderators of the online Lucasfilm Empire.

George Lucas has strung up the Original Star Wars Trilogy and lynched it. And he has completed the 'pick-a-nick' with Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith. Yeah. It sounds that bad. Star Wars: Episode III - Reven...oh God. My teeth itch. In this one we get to see how Mr. Lover Man, King David Anakin succumbs to the naked, Bathsheba Dark Side.

Let's face it. People are enthralled by pain and gore. PG-13 means an R rating would place the film out of the intended market/demographic. Or maybe there's more to it than that. Maybe the MMPA also wants to see Anakin get maimed and burnt to a crisp too. People will agree that there was alot of stuff missing from this picture. A fellow independent filmmaker once said to me that if the trailers look too good, than most likely the movie is really bad.

In the case of Sith, some of it was true. To see Jedi and astromech driods pop out of moving starfighters like spring-action Happy Meal toys may have pleased some people, but let's not lose sight of what this review is all about. These are dark times, my friend. We live in a country where common sense and the thought democracy hardly apply. Like it ever did before....

After Anakin makes short work of Count Dooku, he is rewarded and filled with even more pride than before. Obi-wan goes off to track down a CGI, lizard-based annoyance-of-a-cyborg version of Jar Jar a.k.a. General Grievous. Grievous coughs and wheezes through the entire film. Why? Watch Chapter 25 of Clone Wars Volume II. Anyway, Palpatine begins seducing young Starkiller...I mean, Skywalker by telling him he can have the power to stop people from dying. Wait. Save pregnant wife from certain death? If the motive were just 'I want to go where the power is', I could buy into that concept. If he had just said to hell with Padme, I could accept his turn to the Dark Side.


Even after Anakin and Palpatine killed John Shaft (not Uncle John, his nephew), I didn't see the reason for his turning. Now if Padme had already died, I could see. Nightmares of his mother and nightmares of his wife. If Anakin hasn't learned to let go by then, oh well. Let's say Padme doesn't die in childbirth, but afterward she dies by accident or by a Jedi. Okay then. There's the reason to abandon all that is good and challenge your former master to a duel on a lava planet.

Now, let's talk about the nonsense that has plagued Star Wars fans for years. Anakin's fall into a molten pit. For years people thought that Anakin would fall into molten lava (although in many current accounts before Sith it is said that the pit is just 'molten'). Picture limbless Anakin rolling down the steep incline of hot volcanic sand and using his one mechanical arm to claw his way back up toward Obi-wan. Not in the lava, just near it. And then the little punk begins to burn alive giving it a Darkman type of sympathy. Uh, no. Not buying it.

In the novel of Jedi there is a passage describing how Anakin doesn't want to recall memories of his former life - "molten lava crawling up his back". They could have made some lava droplets splash on Starkiller...Skywalker. Stick to the plan or toss it in the can. Stop making excuses for Lucas. This storyline has been changed so many times, the diaper rash is starting to get contagious and the Sith-loaded pampers are starting to stink.

Any authentic wack job or true-to-the-heart fanboy on the planet knows what is CGI overkill and what is good filmmaking. Technology wise, Lucas has stepped up the medium in the past 30 years. Creativity wise, nah. Don't think so. Think about it. Put yourself in Lucas' shoes (or his mind's eye, or his head filled with stories that don't reach paper for decades). When you're a billionaire who hasn't made a decent film for over 20 years, you surround yourself with creative and smart people, get them to engulf themselves in your big budget movie project and then take all of the credit for it. Take Jonathan Hales for example. Hales wrote for Lucas during the days of the Young Indiana Jones Chronicles (also a period when the CGI revolution was pre Phantom Menace laudable). Hales wrote the basic concept and story for Episode I. Now George Lucas has taken full credit for writing the screenplay and story. However, Hales' name still appears on many websites and other media/movie information sources as a co-writer for Attack of the Cones, which by the way blew big moose meat. Soon, now, very soon, Lucas will also take the credit for penning Clones when it was Hales who wrote it for the big screen. And just like Lucas is slowly wiping clean any traces of the original, original Star Wars Trilogy (the one we grew up with, not the 1997 Special Edit-tions), he is gradually destroying the faith of his Congregation in these modern classics.
Let's face facts: nobody with a sound mind can really say that these two trilogies are equally tied into each other. New technology in the past? Old technology in the future? Come on.


Ailment I - The Flat Acting

Here's what would have made the prequel films more enjoyable. Fire Hayden Christensen (doesn't he want to study architecture anyhow?). Fire George Lucas. Hire a Paul Verhoeven-like director or someone who can take Anakin's Christ-like, tragic hero of a weak-hearted Beowulf character and make him into someone the audience will truly care about deep down inside. Why did people like Luke Skywalker so much? Because he grew as a character that we could relate to in Empire and Jedi. This new millennium Star Wars hero that Lucas has forced us to get to know is no where near the caliber of the part that Mark Hamill played. I'm not saying that Hayden has to be another Mark, but if Lucas is going to mirror movies, characters and plots then it should at least match up to the originals. This is Lucas' doo doo butter to the world. And the fans have spread this crap on the toast of their souls and ate it up. Happy munching, butt-cream disciples.


Ailment II - Attack of the CGI

Lucas is an Emperor in his own right. He's playing both sides; Old Trilogy lovers and New Trilogy lovers (Republic and Separatist). When the more dominant side wins, those are the ones who will fall under the rule of the Emperor. And it looks like the CGI generation are the new slaves to Emperor Lucas rather than the stop-motion, Muppet generation. Emperor Lucas has made it clear that he screwed up Star Wars with re-makes and re-issues to please himself. And it works too. But watch out. The CGI Vader that Lucas has created can also be the end of him. All the money in the world can never redeem the respect of true fans who love the Originals over the 'Episodes'.


Ailment III - Revenge of the Trilogy Ties

Are the Original, original Trilogies but a Galactic Republic memory? It this how our childhood memories are destroyed? With thunderous re-makes and re-edits? Menace, Clones and Sith are all Trilogy tie-together overkill. The dialogue alone says it all. How many times is the name Anakin pounded into our heads like Lucas is saying to us, "This is Anakin Skywalker, Luke's father"? How many times must Obi-wan tell off Anakin about being a Jedi so that folks can understand the friendship of daddy Skywalker and Old Ben in Star Wars, Empire and Jedi? My gosh! Does it really take 20 to 30 years to build a Death Star space station? And don't tell me that the Empire finally figured out how to build a second Death Star in less than three years. One of the reasons why the 1980 Star Wars follow-up was so great is because George Lucas did not direct it. Although his work on Robocop 2 was fairly to please loyal fans, Irvin Kershner will always be remembered for his work on The Empire Strikes Back, not Star Wars Episode V.


Ailment IV - A New Term

Question: where in the original trilogy is the term 'Sith' mentioned? Why all the many 'Darths'? More tags. More crumby concepts that the public is just supposed to buy into. In those days a Dark Jedi was just that and the Dark Side was....well, the Dark Side. Now we've got the Sith. Midi-chlorians and Jar Jar Binks. Mesa tinkin' we in big doo-duh if wesa believin' in sucha barrel of monkey spunk. The midi-chlorians thing is enough to shatter any fanboy's world. First the Force is mystical, spiritual and unseen, now it is a bunch of microscopic life forms that are @ss-raping Star Wars characters like a perverted Yoda with naked younglings. Stop it. I can't watch anymore. Let's remember that Sir Alec Guinness hated the concept of Star Wars so much that he asked Lucas to have his character Old Ben killed off so that he wouldn't have to come back as much in the future films. And why would he want to? Maybe, somehow, Alec knew that the films would later be ruined by the very man who sought to keep them original.


Ailment V - The Ghostwriter Strikes Again

Like John Hales, Lawrence Kasdan is another talented writer who is often overlooked by many Star Wars fans under the sway of the 'Episode' side of the Force. Let's not forget Leigh Brackett either. These names and a few others are the ones who make Star Wars creative and fun as far as concepts and plot. Lucas? Well, he's good at going to movie conventions and telling fans that Star Wars has 9 to 12 parts (they weren't episodes back then, mind you). How can I even give credit to such bullsith? I can't. And I never will. Anyone who needs a ghostwriter to play up a concept and then takes all the credit for the work is not a screenwriter. Like when James Cameron used a black woman's treatment to write the Terminator and then the Wachowski Brothers turned around and used the same copyrighted work to make the Matrix. Different scenario, but the same concept - supposedly creative screenwriter uses a ghostwriter or someone else's work and buys/owns the rights and calls the story his own. No. I'm not buying that crap at all.


Ailment VI - Return of the Sub-conscience Stories

Producer Rick McCallum says that the Star Wars prequels have always existed...in the mind of George Lucas. Okay. So if we save Lucas' brain, freeze it for 200 hundred years, thaw it and then interface it with a cybernetic body, will this mean the development of Episodes 7, 8 and 9? Anybody can walk around with stories on the brain, it all depends on if you have the money to hire a writer to make your mind-trips into reality. Anytime Lucas has to sit down and force himself to pen Sith and then talk about how hard it was just to write a few pages, that's not a hungry writer. That's a burned out entertainer constipated with dependency on other people's creativity. I'll give more creative credit to the man who used a spray bottle nozzle to create General Grievous!


LUCAS
The true Star Wars fans that see
through my bullsith turned against me.
Don't you turn against me!

ORIGINAL TRILOGY
George, we're coming apart!


Lucas force-chokes the Original Trilogy.


I'm not buying the 'episode' tag either. It's - what do we call it, class? Say it with me - "Trilogy tie-together overkill". After the re-re-re-re-re-re issue of the Star Wars Trilogy and the Special Editions in the theaters, every time I think of 'Star Wars Episode...' I think of the concept, character, dialogue and the swarm-of-gnats annoying voice of Jar Jar, and then I think of the entire earth exploding and every living creature on the face of the doomed planet being extinguished and all life as we know it ceasing to exist.

Let's not even go there, people. Let's get back to basics. The first film is called Star Wars (1977). The second film is called Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back (1980). The third film is called Star Wars: Return of the Jedi (1983). The fourth film is called Star Wars Epis.... Opps. Almost caused every living creature on the face of the planet to be extinguished and all life as we know it to cease to exist.

Sounds silly? Well, that's how most people feel since the so-called saga is (according to Lucas) complete/over. Yeah right. 20 years ago this guy said that Star Wars had 9 parts, even 12. So don't be surprised if he makes more movies and changes the concept (i.e. 'episode') and re-issues all the previous films in theaters and on video/disc.

Lucas made a comment along these lines to those who analyze his filmmaking concepts: "If you don't like my movies, don't watch them." Dangerous, even for a billionaire. Bill Gates isn't even that stupid. I wouldn't go as far to say that Lucas is the George W. Bush kind of stupid, but he can be a billionaire and not have the attention of the general public. That's the worst type of rich man to be.

Now I see more Star Wars movies like I see More American Graffiti, with equal results, minus the entire earth exploding and every living creature on the face of the doomed planet being extinguished and all life as we know it ceasing to exist. We'll save that for another re-issue, re-make, re-edit episode-tagged, desperate trilogy-tie together, classic movie lynching project.


Lucas leeps off of the platform at an Avid Star Wars fan. The fan raises his light saber and servers Lucas' legs and arm. Lucas rolls down the steep incline of hot volcanic sand.

AVID SW FAN
You were original! It was said
that you would use some CGI
not abuse it!


Lucas uses his computer generated arm to pull
himself up toward Avid fan, but slides further down
the steep hill toward the hot ILM river.


AVID SW FAN
You were my hero. I liked
your movies, but now you
have destroyed them.


Below Avid fan, Lucas bursts into flame.

LUCAS
I hate you!


Recommended:
No

Suitability For Children: Suitable for Children Age 13 and Older