Star Wars

So Annie and I saw Episode III last night, proving how big of nerds we are. This was undoubtedly the best of the prequels, even if there were a few scenes that I think should have been done differently. But that's the inherent difficulty of making a movie where people already know the ending. (And really, isn't this why so many people think that Episodes I-II sucked? Because they sat there in the theater saying "No, that scene didn't live up to my preconceived notions - I would have done X instead.")

I don't want to give anything away, but I will say this: 1) Episode I was totally superfluous - almost nothing from the plot of that movie is necessary to advance the story in Episodes II-III, and 2) Lucas' inability to write a convincing love story hurts the prequels as a whole.

Finally, over at Slate they have a discussion between the two biggest Star Wars nerds on their staff (yes, I read Slate a lot). Anyway, several parts of the discussion struck me as inaccurate, but this section was waaay off:

And while I'm on the subject, is there anything Obi-Wan Kenobi tells Luke Skywalker at the beginning of Star Wars that turns out to be true? ... He says Luke's father was a great pilot. These prequels give us no real evidence for that.... He says that he fought with Luke's father in the
Clone Wars. If that's true, it's sure hard to tell.

Um? Did this guy watch the prequels? Anakin is several times shown to be a great pilot (that's the whole point of the dumb pod-racing sequence in Episode I). And as for Obi-Wan and Anakin fighting in the Clone Wars together - um, the Clone Wars are all of the fighting in Episodes II-III, and they certainly do a lot of it, side-by-side. That's why Obi-Wan is at times referred to as General Kenobi - because they're fighting a war.

Okay, nerdiness will now come to an end (until my next post, that is).