All hail ladytiamat for the following forwarded review of epi III. But heed her warning:



Subject: Lawrence Miles on REVENGE OF THE SITH
Date: Mon, 13 Jun 2005 22:39:32 -0700

1. Let's start at the very beginning. Great Things About REVENGE OF THE
SITH, Number One: the very first word of the scroll-up is, "WAR!".
Because the film knows that this is what we've spent the last
twenty-seven-and-a-half years waiting for, and that it's the one thing
guaranteed to get us really, really, really excited. It could only have
been more blatant if the movie had opened with the words "LOADS OF
LIGHTSABRE FIGHTS!".

2. Great Things About REVENGE OF THE SITH, Number Two: the opening shot
is quite clearly supposed to be TOUCH OF EVIL in space.

3. But ending with a close-up of R2-D2, instead of Charlton Heston as a
Mexican.

4. Here I'd like to raise a point about Anakin's colour-sense. In THE
PHANTOM MENACE, his chosen Podrace colour is yellow. In ATTACK OF THE
CLONES, when he needs an Airspeeder he immediately makes a bee-line for
a yellow one (this might sound like I'm stretching the point, but in a
line cut from the final draft of the script he explicitly tells Obi-Wan
that he had to choose a speeder with a 'gonzo colour'… you can see why
it was cut). In REVENGE OF THE SITH, he's piloting a Jedi Interceptor
that's been sprayed yellow instead of the standard Republic
red-and-white. From this we *have* to conclude that yellow is Darth
Vader's favourite colour. You would have thought, wouldn't you, that
he'd gravitate towards something at the "black" end of the spectrum?
Presumably his love of sunflowers and summer tones deserts him after the
incident with the lava, or else his armour in the Empire Trilogy would
make him look like Laa Laa.

5. Does it strike anybody else as odd that so many "made" objects in the
STAR WARS universe are named after animals which, as far as we know,
don't exist there? Here we have "vulture droids", "crab droids" and
"homing spiders", but actual vultures, crabs and spiders are nowhere to
be seen. The films don't even tend to do the crap STAR TREK thing of
making up a new animal by shoving the name of a planet in front of an
Earth-type species (STAR WARS animals are generally called things like
"dewback" and "eopie", not "Malastarian starfish" or "Kaminoan puffin").
In fact the only real, non-CGI, non-Muppet animals we see in any of the
six movies are the lizards on Dagobah, and even *they* look as weird and
as out-of-place as that shot in Episode IV where the tractor beam
controls are labelled in English.

6. So, let's make sure we understand this. R2-D2 can not only fly, but
cover eight-foot-tall death-machines in oil and set them on fire, then
deactivate all the defence systems on a mile-long Separatist flagship
while Anakin repeatedly says things like 'Artoo'll get us out of here'.
One question. For what sodding reason can ex-General Kenobi not remember
ever having owned a droid before in Episode IV? Did *he* get a mind-wipe
at some stage? Or is it just another one of those famous Kenobi lies,
like 'he betrayed and murdered your father', 'only Imperial
Stormtroopers are so precise' and 'good to see you again, Jar Jar'?

7. Or 'I haven't gone by the name of Obi-Wan since, ooh, before you were
born'?

8. It's nice to see Christopher Lee joining the "Are You *Supposed* to
Die That Quickly?" Club, an exclusive set whose membership also includes
Drew Barrymore in SCREAM and Marlon Brando in SUPERMAN. In this case you
could be excused for thinking that it's not really Count Dooku at all,
but an android duplicate / clone / hologram of some kind. At least, I
*hope* you can be excused for thinking that, because otherwise I feel a
bit stupid.

9. And it's nice to see that they kill him off in the style of Lord
Summerisle, with a ritual decapitation that's *got* to be a nod to the
pentangle-of-swords scene out of THE WICKER MAN.

10. Although "nod" might not be the most apt word to use here.

11. And at least he's not in drag this time.

12. In every STAR WARS movie, there's a moment in the first act when
something happens to prove that this isn't going to be like all the
other films you see these days, and that things are a bit more *sudden*
around here. In ATTACK OF THE CLONES, it's the point when Obi-Wan has to
catch a floating assassin droid outside a tower-block window and -
instead of running off and finding a hover-vehicle, the way most boring
characters (and Anakin) would - leaps through the glass and clings onto
it instead, because that's what Jedi *do*. The comparable moment in
REVENGE OF THE SITH, with a similar "defenestration" theme, comes when
General Grievous figures out that the best way for a
non-oxygen-breathing droid to get off a doomed star-cruiser is just to
smash a window and get sucked out. That wouldn't have occurred to me,
for some reason.

13. It probably would have done if I were a non-oxygen-breathing droid.

14. "General Grievous" is, like the title ATTACK OF THE CLONES, one of
those names that sounds rubbish when you hear it but makes sense when
you find out the reason for it. He's a hideous droid warlord who's been
specially-built to scare the pants off of the right-minded
Daily-Mail-reading people of the Republic, of *course* he's called
something like "General Grievous". Besides, it's got the same ring as
"General Woundwort" in WATERSHIP DOWN, who may be a rabbit but who's
nonetheless similar in many respects.

15. And accepting that he's been "built evil" also removes the awkward
question of what his motivation might be for waging a war against the
Republic, when he doesn't seem to have any material interest in the
Separatist movement at all. So is Grievous the Osama bin Laden to Count
Dooku's Saddam Hussein, or is it the other way around?

16. While we're on that subject… I may have mentioned this before, but
one of the things that make me really resent Osama bin Laden is the way
he spoiled ATTACK OF THE CLONES for me. Bear in mind, STAR WARS is
supposed to look bigger than anything else on Earth. Episode II begins
with a diplomatic spaceship being bombed out of existence in a colossal
explosion, something that must have seemed like a "big" opening by the
standards of 1999 (i.e. when the script was written). But by 2002, we'd
seen a real-world terrorist attack so massive that it made the
blowing-up of a spaceship look like a titchy little car-bombing by
comparison, so the film was bound to start on a bum note. This
unexpected competition from reality may explain why the first act of
REVNGE OF THE SITH ends with the front half of a mile-long space-cruiser
crash-landing in the middle of a city and taking out several large
buildings on the way down: you can almost hear George Lucas thinking,
"right, let's see al-Qaeda top *this*".

17. All right, maybe not consciously.

18. And as if to rub in the fact that he's an evil Middle-Eastern
terrorist, Grievous is the one who has to talk about moving the
Separatist council to a planet called "Mustafar". This just makes me
think of the Evil Arabs in CARRY ON, FOLLOW THAT CAMEL ('Mustafa
Leek!'), especially since Grievous' Evil Arab voice isn't a million
miles away from Bernard Bresslaw's.

19. Beyond a certain point, predictable jokes start to become funny just
*because* they're predictable, and because you can see the punchline
coming a mile off (e.g. the entire latter career of Frankie Howerd).
This is why the funniest line in REVENGE OF THE SITH is, for me, 'the
planet is volcanic'. Volcanic? Really? Will there be lava, by any
chance? It's like seeing a banana skin on a narrow ledge.

20. Given that I've got more affection for "new" STAR WARS than for the
boring old spaceships-can-be-any-colour-as-long-as-it's-grey kind (bear
in mind that I've now sat through all six films in a cinema full of
battle-dressed STAR WARS fans who insisted on whooping and cheering at
every piece of pseudo-adolescent smugness that came out of Han Solo's
mouth, and believe me when I tell you that after six hours Harrison Ford
is vastly more irritating than Jar Jar Binks), my reaction to seeing
familiar STAR WARS things in Episode III might not be entirely typical.
Inevitably, there was a round of applause in the cinema when Chewbacca
turned up, but to be honest I don't really give a stuff about Chewbacca.
On the other hand, I felt like clapping when a Dwarf Spider popped out
of the water on Kashyyyk, because if you've seen the battle sequence at
the end of ATTACK OF THE CLONES as many times as I have then it's like
bumping into an old friend down the pub.

21. And watching the complete six-film set in a cinema full of
foamy-mouthed fans, it became clear that certain lines can't even be
taken seriously by the kind of people who like dressing up as
Stormtroopers. Darth Vader's notorious comment about his son in RETURN
OF THE JEDI ('I have felt him') and the Emperor's even more ill-judged
response ('strange that I have not') must have seemed perfectly
reasonable in 1983, when everybody was less conscious of
kiddie-fiddling, but in 2005 it got the biggest laugh of the day. Almost
as funny was Anakin's wet dream about his mother in ATTACK OF THE
CLONES, and George Lucas apparently still can't see the slash-fiction
undertones of his work, hence the unfortunate audience reaction to
Yoda's statement: 'Good relations with the Wookiees, I have.'

22. It doesn't help that he seems to like riding on them.

23. Yoda, obviously. Not George Lucas.

24. Now, C-3PO turning out to be the creation of Anakin Skywalker in
Episode I, I can accept: there's a good reason for C-3PO's destiny to be
tied to that of the Skywalker family over the next twenty years,
especially with R2-"I'm Keeping My Memories, Sucker"-D2 pushing him
around. Yoda using Chewbacca as a People-Carrier, however, is pushing
it. The fact that Chewbacca will one day end up accidentally bumping
into the spawn of Yoda's most troubled pupil is, in a galaxy with so
many inhabited planets that nobody's ever visited them all, a
coincidence which makes you think of the way that the same half-dozen
people keep getting marooned, kidnapped or generally menaced together in
THE ADVENTURES OF TINTIN.

25. The Wookiee Horde: it's almost as if George Lucas is deliberately
*trying* to make Peter Jackson look stupid now.

26. It also breaks new ground in cinema battle-scenes, being an army of
aliens who all look subtly different. The big mass o' Gungans in THE
PHANTOM MENACE may have been massively ahead of anything else that was
around in 1999 (and may, regrettably, have paved the way for THE LORD OF
THE RINGS), but with hindsight all the Gungans are the same height,
weight and colour. There's no Don-Estelle-type "Lofty" Gungan, nor are
there any grizzled Gungan veterans with battle-scars or artificial
limbs. By contrast, the x-hundred Wookiees we see on Kashyyyk are so
"customised" that there's a terrible risk of Lucasfilm giving them all
names and forcing STAR WARS fans to learn them off by heart.

27. You also get the feeling that you're watching RETURN OF THE JEDI
done properly. This is, we have to assume, what the Ewoks were supposed
to be like.

28. Another note on colour. It's worth mentioning that in the Empire (I
refuse to say "original") Trilogy, good is blue and evil is red. Here,
the forces of the Republic all have red markings and the droids of the
Separatists are mainly decked out in blue. You really don't pick up on
things like that until you have to start building the spaceships out of
Lego.

29. Even *I'm* amused by my use of the words "have to" there.

30. Another thing you don't immediately notice without the benefit of
Lego is that the Clone Trooper Juggernaut (the bloody great tank thing,
you can't miss it) is based on the same body-template as the AT-AT
Walker, but with wheels instead of legs. Well, *I* thought it was worth
mentioning.

31. Right, let me see if I understand Sith history correctly. Darth
Plagueis learned the secret of midichlorian-prodding, and taught
everything he knew to his apprentice, who promptly killed him in his
sleep. Except that nobody except Plagueis ever found out how to create
life, so straight away we have to assume that Palpatine's mangling the
story a bit and that Plagueis' apprentice wasn't taught *everything*.
Except that… according to the REVENGE OF THE SITH Visual Dictionary
(yes, of course I did), Darth Plagueis was the name of Darth Sidious'
mentor. Which raises two questions. One: if Plagueis qualifies as a Sith
'legend' and taught Sidious most of what he knew, then how old is
Palpatine, and how did he end up becoming a Senator for Naboo without
anyone checking his background? Two: if 'legend' is an exaggeration and
Plagueis died relatively recently, and if he's the only one who ever
learned to create life with midichlorian play-doh, then…did he ever go
to Tatooine? Was he, in some way, responsible for the Shmi Skywalker
Virgin Birth? Was Anakin supposed to be Sith-fodder all along, and if
so, then did Sidious know about it or was Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan's landing
on Tatooine just a coincidence / fluke of the Force (because 'in my
experience, there's no such thing as luck')?

32. I have to ask these things. It's in my nature.

33. Oh, and… the apprentice killed Plagueis in his sleep, suggesting
that Jedi and Sith are vulnerable when they're dozing. These people can
sense the presence of any approaching life-form and make droids explode
just by glaring at them moodily, and yet they don't have a built-in
"alarm clock" option to stop people sneaking up on them when their eyes
are shut. In the league-table of unlikely weaknesses, this is on a par
with "Martians are susceptible to the common cold".

34. The upper classes' idea of entertainment on Coruscant: go to the
opera, to watch a demonstration of antiquated CGI water. The Visual
Dictionary claims that this display was organised by the Mon Calamari,
who are obviously the only species in the galaxy with the skill to
accurately reconstruct the movies of James Cameron.

35. Utapau: nice to see that even in the dying days of the Republic,
alien cultures are still wearing snug, ridged knitwear to keep their
necks warm.

36. And have matching faces.

37. General Grievous hides out in an insular, lo-tech community with no
interest in external politics, and thus involves the locals in a war
which sees large numbers of troops moving in to apprehend a secret
council that isn't actually there any more. Yeah, definitely bin Laden.

38. In the same way that it's impossible to watch the arena scene in
ATTACK OF THE CLONES without thinking of the Harryhausen MYSTERIOUS
ISLAND (oh, you know, the one with the giant crab), and impossible to
watch the Battle Droid mass-awakening in THE PHANTOM MENACE without
thinking of the skeletons in JASON AND THE ARGONAUTS, it's impossible to
watch the "Grievous Bodily Arms" sequence without thinking of THE GOLDEN
VOYAGE OF SINBAD. The SITH version of multi-limbed swordfighting is
better in most respects, although it obviously lacks that frisson of Tom
Baker.

39. And in the STAR WARS universe, their version of the expression "the
bigger they are, the harder they fall" is something like "the more arms
you've got, the more arms you've got to be severed".

40. Another moment of getting things exactly right: faced with a
four-armed cyborg monstrosity packing multiple lightsabres, General
"Apparently I'm Not Called Obi-Wan Right Now" Kenobi doesn't do the
usual Hollywood thing of looking startled in a comical way (what's known
in film circles as the "Uh-Oh Face"), or even the usual STAR WARS thing
of Having a Bad Feeling About This. Instead, he obviously finds it as
hilarious as we do.

41. You also have to admire Ewan McGregor's new Jedi Ninja Stance.
Crouching Bantha, Hidden Scotsman.

42. Now there's a man who *knows* how to make a giant lizard suicidally
obedient to his every whim.

43. Lego Notes, #3. The Lego set of the scene in which General Kenobi
pursues General Grievous is, not unreasonably, called "General Grievous
Chase". Before seeing the film, this puzzled me, as I assumed that
"Grievous Chase" was the General's full name and that he might possibly
be related to Lorraine. Appropriately, if you try to make the Lego
models go as fast as the ones in the film then your arms fall off.

44. It's been said that Hayden Christensen is thinking of giving up
acting and becoming an architect, presumably because he knows there's no
way he's ever going to get a better acting job than copping off with
Natalie Portman. But then, given his well-known love of propping up the
bar, it's possible that he only ended up in this role through a
misunderstanding: for all we know, he could have drunkenly slurred the
words 'I want to be an architect of skyscrapers' and been sent off to
the STAR WARS auditions before he even knew what was happening.

45. But it's a better person than me who can get an hour into the film
without thinking: 'For Christ's sake, man, stop moping.'

46. 'And while you're at it, get a haircut. Preferably one that makes
you look less like a Regency ponce.'

47. Likewise, it's hard to watch the moment when Anakin finally works
out that Palpatine is a Sith Lord without wanting to pull a "mong" face
at him.

48. Although my mother saw the film and honestly thought it was supposed
to be a *surprise* when Palpatine was revealed as the villain. How can
anybody live in a world like that?

49. At which point, we have to ask just how many people in the STAR WARS
universe realise that the Chancellor's evil. Palpatine is presumably the
best-known face in galactic politics, and according to ATTACK OF THE
CLONES they *do* have TV in this civilisation, yet Darth Sidious has no
qualms about materialising in front of half the galaxy's major corporate
powers with nothing to disguise his identity but a floppy hood over his
eyes. He doesn't even bother changing his voice, except for making it a
bit more condescending. You can see how the Nemoideans might not
necessarily make the connection (all human beings probably look alike to
them), and we might assume that Count Dooku knows the truth (especially
if we interpret the look on his face before he dies as 'fuck me, I
didn't know he was going to do that'), but has nobody on the Separatist
side spotted the remarkable similarity between the galaxy's Supreme
Chancellor and their leading co-conspirator? Even General Grievous
doesn't seem to have a clue what's really going on. It is, if you will,
like George W. Bush putting on a pair of sunglasses and then selling
arms to foreign dictators in the hope that nobody's going to notice.

50. No, hang on a minute. That sounded more credible than it was
supposed to.

51. Things a Woman Had to Point Out to Me About REVENGE OF THE SITH,
Number One: Padme has the least appropriate dress-sense in the universe.
In ATTACK OF THE CLONES, she puts on a kinky leather bodice in order to
tell Anakin that she doesn't want to get off with him. Here, she
responds to the need to keep her pregnancy secret by swanning around
Coruscant in a wide selection of space-age maternity-wear.

52. I'm sorry, but it has to be said: much of this seems terribly
uneven. Half of the film is slower than normal STAR WARS, as if Lucas
wants to do the sombre "I, CLAUDIUS with bigger sets" thing and focus on
people agonising about the fall of the Republic, which is fine. But half
of it is even faster than normal, with Ewan McGregor mounting dinosaurs
at high speed and Yoda overseeing "APOCALYPSE NOW: The Wookiee Years".
Which is also fine, but they don't quite mesh, so it looks as though the
film's trying to focus on one thing but making occasional gestures
towards the other (although which it's focusing on and which it's
gesturing towards is a matter of opinion). Interestingly, the interview
George Lucas gave at the premiere revealed that he still thinks of STAR
WARS as being something like a Saturday morning serial, and from that
point of view REVENGE OF THE SITH makes a lot more sense. General
Kenobi's adventure on Utapau is meant to be an individual "episode",
taking place at the same time as Anakin's seduction by Palpatine (not
literally, that would be hideous) but made to a completely different
tempo. They're not supposed to be part of the same instalment, let alone
jumbled up inside the confines of a two-hour movie.

53. Oh look, now Mace Windu's had his arm sliced off. It's a pity we
never see any fully-operational medical facilities in the STAR WARS
universe (Happy Asteroid Maternity Clinic doesn't count), because you
really do get the feeling that these people's hands drop off as easily
as most of us get paper-cuts. Hospitals must be choked with wheelie-bins
full of severed limbs.

54. In fact… do you realise that more arms are severed in this film than
in all previous STAR WARS movies put together?

55. Still, at least Samuel L. Jackson's the only one who bothers
screaming like a bastard.

56. Re: the moment when Palpatine gives Anakin his new Sith name ('from
this moment on, you will be known as Darth… [deep breath] …Vader'). Is
it just me, or does this make the whole Sith-initiation process sound
like the bit at the end of ALBERTO FROG AND HIS AMAZING ANIMAL BAND
where Alberto picks a flavour of milkshake and the audience has to guess
what it'll be? 'I think I'll have… [deep breath] …strawberry.'

57. "'I bet he'll be Darth Evillus,' said the Wookiees on the euphonium."

58. Hardly anybody's going to get that, are they?

59. What's really scary is that when Palpatine gets hideously deformed
by his own deflected Sith lightning, he just ends up looking *more* like
Dennis Potter.

60. On a more pleasant note… what with this and the "End of the World"
episode of DOCTOR WHO, this really is turning out to be a good year for
blue alien birds with big knockers.

61. Yet more on colour. Since the Republic Trilogy is all about the
(figurative) Fall of Night, it probably hadn't escaped your notice that
THE PHANTOM MENACE is full of wide open "daylight" spaces in
blue-and-green, whereas ATTACK OF THE CLONES is shot mainly in sunset
tones. I say "it probably hadn't escaped your attention", but the truth
is that for a long time it escaped *my* attention, just because I didn't
pick up on it consciously: I only really noticed how well Lucas uses
light and colour when I realised that I was instinctively expecting
Episode III to take place at night, and to culminate in a torchlit
storming of the Jedi Temple with overtones of BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN. And I
wasn't far fucking wrong, was I?

62. It'll surprise nobody to hear that in the six-movie showing, the
audience applauded every slightest reference to anything from the Empire
Trilogy, including the boarding corridor of Bail Organa's Blockade
Runner (you know, the one where the Stormtroopers burst in at the start
of Episode IV). It's the first time I've ever heard people give
furnishings a standing
ovation.

63. And doesn't the décor look cheap, compared to everything else in the
Republic? But then, "Alderaan" does sound like the kind of brand-name
you'd get at Ikea.

64. At this point I'd just like to say that the man sitting next to me
in the cinema was dressed as Jango Fett, and if he ever gets to read
this then I'd like to remind him that he's still got my commemorative
REVENGE OF THE SITH Survival Pack. The one I left under my seat when I
went out of the cinema to be sick.

65. On which note… I should explain that I was in hospital for most of
REVENGE OF THE SITH's week of release, and was in a semi-delusional
state for much of the time. A few days after returning home, I found
myself watching an episode of THE PROFESSIONALS in which the villain was
played by Ian McDiarmid, and that's a terrible thing to do to someone
who thinks he might still be hallucinating.

66. Everybody takes to calling Palpatine "the Emperor" remarkably
quickly, I see. Especially Yoda, who's not even around when Palpatine
announces the founding of the Empire, but picks up the term as soon as
the former Supreme Chancellor starts wearing a hooded robe and looking
horribly deformed.

67. Great Things About REVENGE OF THE SITH, Number 121: the identity of
Darth Vader's first-ever "choke" victim. Although to be honest, that's
not the way *I'd* try to choke Natalie Portman.

68. Gosh, what a lot of lava. That's even more lava than I was hoping for.

69. Now, personally, I was expecting the long-awaited "Anakin Falls in
Something Volcanic" moment to be a fairly straightforward
fights-on-a-catwalk / suddenly-loses-balance / neatly-tumbles-into-
boiling-magma affair. I *wasn't* expecting Obi-Wan to chop his legs off
and then leave him to burn to death on a charcoal beach. I know who
*I'm* going to be cheering the next time I see that lightsabre fight in
Episode IV.

70. The one which, with hindsight, just makes you think: 'Jesus, can't
you people go any faster?'

71. And, am I the only one who saw Obi-Wan's final trouncing of Anakin
and found himself thinking of the 'get out of the way or I'll cut your
arms and legs off' bit from MONTY PYTHON AND THE HOLY GRAIL?

72. I see someone's already done the 'shouting lava, lava, lava, lava'
gag, probably inevitable given the TRAINSPOTTING connection. Sadly, the
other alternative titles for Episode III ("Why Do Fools Fall in Lava?",
"Ever Fallen in Lava with Someone You Shouldn't Have") no longer work,
given that there's no actual falling involved.

73. One of the things that's always been appealing about STAR WARS is
its sense of what its creator called a "used future", in which the
universe is full of spare parts and droids are sold on like second-hand
cars. In which case, you have to wonder whether the droid catalogue on
Mustafar lists things like "wide, flat head for easy balancing above
lava-fields" among the optional extras like a CD player or a year's free
insurance.

74. If there's one sentence I never thought I'd write, then that
sentence has to be "too many lightsabre fights".

75. But when Yoda waddles into the Emperor's office, after we've already
seen Anakin slaughter Count Dooku and Palpatine slaughter Mace Windu (as
well as grinning amphibian ATTACK OF THE CLONES star Kit Fisto,
tragically), *and* while we're still trying to concentrate on the big
Kenobi / Skywalker face-off… you just find yourself thinking: 'No, don't
reach for your belt. Just throw some architecture at him.'

76. And I don't know about you, but when the midwife droid started
talking about 'babies' and the assorted good guys reacted with surprise
to the news that there was more than one, I was hoping against hope that
the droid would wind everybody up by saying: 'Yes… it's triplets.'

77. Lego Notes #4. The Lego set entitled "Darth Vader Transformation"
is, perhaps, the least accurate piece of STAR WARS Lego to date. It's a
representation of the Evil Operating Table, with a minifigure of a
"hopelessly scarred" Anakin attached to one side and Darth Vader
attached to the other, so that you can spin it around to suggest a
metamorphosis from one to the other. Unfortunately, Anakin is
fully-clothed and has feet.

78. We've yet to see the corresponding "Padme Amidala Maternity" set,
which allows you to pull apart the minifigure of Natalie Portman and
remove two specially-moulded Lego babies from a secret hatch underneath.
A bit like that old Palitoy / Kenner model of the Tauntaun with the
jointed stomach-opening.

79. Darth Vader (i.e. the version in the big suit) is now capable of
using contractions. Presumably he gives up on normal English words like
"can't" and "don't" at the same time that he stops saying things like
"gonzo".

80. Astonishingly, Vader's big moment at the climax of the film actually
sees him clench his fists, spread his arms, look up to the heavens and
shout 'NOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!'. You get the feeling it was done
that way just so THE SIMPSONS could take the piss out of it.

81. My biggest single problem with this film: I wasn't singing a new
song for three days after I saw it. THE PHANTOM MENACE made it feel as
if "Duel of the Fates" was the theme that underpinned the entire world
(and I could also mention the less-well-regarded but almost-as-great
Battle Droid March, whatever it's called), while ATTACK OF THE CLONES
gave us "Beyond the Stars", which very nearly made me stop breathing.
But the only things I can clearly remember about the score of REVENGE OF
THE SITH are the bits taken from all the other movies. I seem to recall
that there's a very good "Tragedy Theme" which plays whenever something
really bad happens, although right now I couldn't sing it. I just
remember being vaguely disappointed when it got undercut by the Imperial
March / Darth Vader Theme in the climactic "give it another nineteen
years and it'll be ready" Death Star scene, because I'm frankly sick of
the Imperial March by now.

82. On a similar note, I've never really liked Princess Leia's theme
much, mainly because it's as sloppy as baby-poo. So its brief use here,
when the individual who's going to grow up to be Carrie Fisher gets
cooed over on Alderaan, seems messily appropriate.

83. You also have to question Leia's claim in RETURN OF THE JEDI that
she remembers her mother (as a warm and wonderful person, naturally).
Unless she's a bit confused and actually thinking of the midwife droid.

84. The midwife droid being the one with the great big scoop-hands,
which we hope to God are used for cleaning up baby-sick rather than
anything gynaecological.

85. Ah. According to the Visual Dictionary, they're "cradling paddles".

86. Honestly, though. Nineteen years to build an operational Death Star.
Couldn't they just build the weapon part, and leave all the plumbing and
trash-compacting facilities until later? It doesn't *need* to be the
size of a small moon to blow up planets, does it?

87. But this week's main talking-point: does R2 know that Anakin
Skywalker and Darth Vader are the same person? Does *anybody* ever find
out, apart from the Emperor, Yoda and Obi-Wan (the only people who hear
the name "Darth Vader" before the cyborg'd-up version makes his presence
felt on the galactic stage)? Come to think of it, does the
galaxy-in-general ever find out that its Emperor is a Sith, and is the
word "Sith" even recognised outside of Jedi circles?

88. 'Training I have for you on Tatooine, Obi-Wan. The secret of
immortality an old friend has discovered, and how to commune with him I
will teach you. Mentioning this now I am because a complete mess this
part of the continuity is, and re-hire Liam Neeson to do it properly we
could not.'

89. Meanwhile, on the Blockade Runner: 'Get these two droids to
maintenance. Wipe the protocol droid's memory. Don't bother with the
little one, because obviously a robot that doesn't speak English can't
be any kind of security risk.'

90. 'Mind you, it might be a good idea to take out the circuits that let
him fly and set fire to his enemies. Because I can't see how these
capabilities might be of any use in our forthcoming struggle against the
Empire.'

91. So… would anybody like to explain that "Sifo-Dyas" business? Because
the director obviously can't be arsed.

92. Endearingly, the very last line of the very last STAR WARS movie is:
'Oh, no.' (It's worth pointing out that ATTACK OF THE CLONES was the
only film in history to have featured the last line of the movie -
'begun, this Clone War has' - in its trailer, simply because it gave
absolutely nothing away. This one says even less.)

93. Obi-Wan dumps a baby on Beru Lars-nee-Whitesun without warning, even
though the child isn't remotely blood-related to her and even though she
lives in a moisture-farming community where everyone has to work all
year round just to make ends meet. What's she grinning at?

94. And… why do these desert-bumpkins insist on calling the child "Luke
Skywalker", rather than the far less risky "Luke Lars"? Are they
*trying* to give the boy an innate disadvantage, a la "A Boy Named Sue"?

95. Jar Jar Binks has exactly one line in this film. I can see how he
might spoil the mood, but that being the case, why is Ahmed Best's name
still so close to the top of the cast list? Is it just a form of ritual
humiliation?

96. On the subject of the credits (God, I've got an opinion about
everything)… for some time now, I've been bothered by the spelling of
the word "lightsabre". All the publicity material so far has insisted on
"lightsaber", which looks like a vulgar Americanism, but as it's a
made-up word I've never felt as if I've had the right to argue. Judging
by the end credits of REVENGE OF THE SITH, however, Lucasfilm has
finally learned to spell in English: there's a listing for a "Light
Sabre Technician", although admittedly the space in "lightsabre" does
make it look as if he's a technician who isn't qualified to handle
sabres above a certain size.

97. Three years ago, writing a list of "Things About ATTACK OF THE
CLONES", I said that nothing makes you realise how good STAR WARS is
like having to sit through the trailer for THE TIME MACHINE beforehand.
So far, before REVENGE OF THE SITH I've been shown trailers for STEALTH,
FANTASTIC FOUR, MADAGASCAR and THE PACIFIER, which not only make me
realise how good STAR WARS is but how much I hate everything made by
Californians. The trailer for WAR OF THE WORLDS - this year's attempt to
piss on H. G. Wells' grave - seems almost acceptable by comparison.
Which begs the question: is REVENGE OF THE SITH *really* going to be the
last decent action spectacular that Hollywood (if you can call the
Skywalker Ranch an extension of Hollywood) ever makes? Or is there some
way out of this hell-hole of ugly militarism and bad CGI?

98. Things I saw / heard while at the shops today: a father and his
eight-year-old son talking about STAR WARS, and a mother and her
eight-year-old daughter talking about DOCTOR WHO. For this one moment in
time, if *only* for this one moment in time… human culture appears to be
safe.

99. As an addendum to point number 5, I should make it clear that (a)
when I say the only "real" animals in STAR WARS are the lizards on
Dagobah, I'm not counting the flies on Liam Neeson; and (b) yes, I know
the English labels have been taken out of the DVD version. So don't
bother pointing that out or anything.

- LM. --



Thank you Lawrence, whomever you may be.

I second this emotion: amused