You know, that son of a bitch George Lucas would never return my calls, and now he’s finished up the whole cycle with bunches of light sabre fights instead of a deeply mythical twist.
Disclaimer: at this point, I haven’t seen Episode III. I am satisfied that it is better than the first two (I believe Buckaroo Banzai is better than the first two, and that is one lameass movie!), but my current rant has not been influenced by anything so vulgar as actually having seen the film.
So how should it have ended?
First of all, we have to go back and change Episode II as well. That movie was interesting for about ten minutes, when Count Dooku told whoever he was torturing, was it Anakin or Obi-Wan?, that he had built the clone army to fight against the Sith, since the Jedi Council was so obtuse. There was an interesting plotline: three sides to the upcoming cataclysm, one of them a renegade Jedi. Is he fighting for or against the Sith? Is he or isn’t he a Sith himself? You see the suspense that we could have been treated to, not only in Episode II but through much of Episode III as well. But no, Dooku was lying, of course, and the whole movie deflated.
Instead, imagine we’ve plunged into Episode III with this massive round of combat, intrigue, and betrayal going on. You got the Sith Lord, the Senate, Dooku and his army, the Jedi Council, replete with Yoda, Obi-Wan, Anakin, Mace Windu, Datare Gister (the “Fat Knight”), and the whole gang. Padmé and Anakin are married, secretly, and she runs to hide (on his orders) from the carnage as one Jedi after another is betrayed.
Things get more complicated till we get to where we need to be, i.e., Palpatine is Emperor and Sith Lord, Dooku is defeated by Anakin, and finally we have Anakin fighting two of the remaining Jedi, Obi-Wan and Datare Gister, on the edge of the volcano. He taunts them with the classic “No man may hinder me,” and of course Datare Gister, the Fat Knight, pulls off the Darth-Vader-like mask he’s always worn, and of course it’s Padmé, fat because she’s gi-normously pregnant. She stabs at him, he falls in, she goes into labor, wrap it up quick and leave it there. We don’t have to see it all, George. We know what happens after that. We saw Episode IV-VI, remember?
So anyway, I’d like to thank the Academy, and all the little people.
Geez Dale, is somebody a little bitter that somebody doesn’t have a blockbuster of one’s own? I really must insist that you see this before you come to Valdosta; I don’t know if there’s any other subject I’ll be able to talk about this summer.
I saw the movie yesterday. It was a dazzling triumph. It does not, as some have suggested elsewhere, let Lucas off the hook for Episodes I & II. Indeed, my deepest reaction to this movie was that he must, in all honor, go back and remake the first two. From scratch. Total rewrites.
Otherwise, and this was my first thought upon rising from my seat, Episode III renders the first two irrelevant. No one who has not seen them needs to.
But Dale, without Phantom Menace, we would never have met Jar Jar. We would never have the wonderful mystery of Darth Maul’s inner demons. We wouldn’t know the deeply relevant fact that Anakin built Threepio. In short, Phantom Menace is nothing short of indespensable.
So elegantly Kevin proves my point.
In the future, when these movies are shown, they will be in this order: IV-V-VI-III. The first two Episodes will not be a part of the festival.