I saw the new Star Wars about a week and a half ago. I haven't really mentioned it except to some friends in person. I realized, though, that if I continued to stay silent, my geek card would be taken away. While that would vastly improve my dating life, it would render meaningless the considerable sum of money I spent on the Babylon 5 DVDs.
When I mention that I've seen it, the inevitable question is, "What did you think?" My response: "It was decent." That's the short version, so if you don't want more, stop reading now.
When I got out of the theater, I was pretty high on it, but I figured out this is part of Lucas's nefarious strategy to make us like the third prequel. He does this by giving us two pieces of crap before releasing a decent movie.
Specifics? Well, we learned in the last film that Lucas is utterly inept, completely incompetent, at writing dialog, particularly romance dialog. He's a great big picture guy, a visionary, but it doesn't work so well in the trenches. This isn't a knock-down. I'm somehow even worse at that sort of thing than he is, but the difference is that I'm not writing movies. In this case, the dialog continued to bite. The names, too. As Linus said last week, ""General Grievous'? Twenty years to come up with this stuff and the best name he's got is 'General Grievous'?" I'm not sure what happened since the original trilogy. Particularly the radio chatter during the space fight scenes was excellent. It had a sense of weight, of reality that made it feel genuine. None of that here.
Back to the movie in particular, it felt rushed to me. This may be surprising, given the well over two hour length, but it seemed to be sort of a "highlights" movie. So many things to cram into one sitting. I always got the impression from the original series that the fall of the republic was a "many years" kind of thing. It was an epic struggle. The way the movie played out, though, sort of wrapped everything up in a tidy manner. It seemed like the sole purpose was to set the stage for the "next" film.
A better option? Some will consider this blasphemous, but I think TV would have been a better medium for this story. The aforementioned Babylon 5 is proof that a series with an overarching storyline can succeed, and it would have allowed a much deeper exploration of the various stories, characters, and make Skywalker's fall much more, well, plausible. I know there would be a lot of obstacles to such a thing, including the time commitment of the actors, the lower status of TV, etc. There would have been other alternatives, too, more practical ones.
So was it bad? No, I don't think so. It was better than either of the other two. The visuals, as usual, were impressive, so it warrants a visit to the theater. Not at full price, though. If you must see it now, go to a matinée. If not, wait for the discount theater. Overall, the short version of the review pretty much sums it up: It was decent.
