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Revenge Of The Stiff

It's that time again. We all knew it was coming - the levels of pride that Nerd Melbourne usually is able to keep under control suddenly surged into the red as the date became closer and closer. You know what I'm talking about: Look out childhood, you're about to be raped! There's a new Star Wars movie coming to town, and it's lookin' for love in ALL the wrong places!

Yes, the cinematic bowels of George Lucas have once again opened wide, releasing their payload onto the faces and down the throats of yet another unsuspecting, middle-class audience. For, 'the circle is now complete', as everyone is fond of yammering - and his 30 year Star Wars saga is finally over. And, with bittersweet tears, nerds from across the nation are emerging - broken hearted and deeply moved - by the plight of Anakin Skywalker, and his savage journey into the dark heart of man, which will leave him disfigured, dismembered, and reborn as seminal film villain Darth Vader. This film, the sixth and final in the series, is as black as ebony, and features scenes that are disturbing and upsetting - elevating the tone of the Star Wars saga to a new level of emotional realism, resulting in a gut-punch of a film.

At least, that's what everyone who wants this piece of shit to be good is saying - after reading it ad-nauseum in the pre-release reviews.

Let's be honest - and let's not lose our heads, boys and girls. George Lucas could release a film of himself taking a big, steaming dump onto the face of a bound, naked cub-scout, and the dorks of the world would proclaim it epochal and timeless. He could make a film called 'Star Wars 7: I Beat My Wife Because The Bitch Wouldn't Shut Up', and it could be ninety minutes of him whipping his wife in the face and breasts with a power cord, and the apologists would declare that it is evocative, cutting-edge, and if you don't like it, 'you don't get it'.

I get it just fine. But, I am not so brainless as to proclaim something that is clearly an emotionless, vapid piece of shit as anything but that. Let's be real, you little bastards - 'Revenge Of The Sith' isn't a triumph of filmmaking; it's a triumph of economics. Over the film's interminable two and a half hours, there is nothing that even remotely approaches competent writing, let alone any kind of complex filmmaking - from the non-existant mis-en-scene, to Lucas's hard-on for CGI, the film SCREAMS at you, demanding that you try to guess how many gazillion dollars it cost.

Here's the plot.

Once upon a time, there was a whining guy called Anakin Skywalker who whined a lot. He was training to be a Jedi Knight. Jedi Knights use 'The Force' to 'defend the galaxy' and 'maintain peace' - although, their definition of 'maintaining peace' seems to involve killing people all the time. When last we left Anakin, the 'Clone War' was about to start. This is a war in which thousands of robots fight an army cloned from the DNA of Temuera Morrison - and if you're gonna clone somebody, it might as well be him. Both sides are fighting, but nobody knows why. They just are. The robots need a leader who can dish out the biff, so they choose Christopher Lee. They may as well have chosen Christopher Reeve, considering that Lee dies about three seconds into this stupid movie - but, whatever. Anakin hacks off his head, because Chancellor Palpatine thinks it's a good idea. Apparently, if you're a good Jedi, you're not supposed to cut people's heads off - just their hands. And legs. Anyway, Anakin gets over it pretty quickly and runs off to Natalie Portman's house. See, in the period between the last film and this one, they've been playing hide the sausage, and apparently there's no contraception in a galaxy far away, and Anakin has knocked her up. Jedi aren't supposed to get naked with ladies, so they must keep it a secret. Weirdly, there seems to be countless people queueing up to become Jedi, despite the fact that once it happens, you can no longer have a shag. This speaks volumes to me about how Star Wars fans really identify with the characters in the films - most of them don't have sex, either.

Anyway, George throws in a new character called General Grievous, who is like a robot crab and he holds four lightsabers and only Ewan McGregor can take him out, and he must have really cleaned up since 'Trainspotting' because he does it pretty quickly. Much CGI abounds, as Ewan rides a giant lizard and looks all dashing and dreamy. While this is happening, Anakin is being all pouty and upset - his buddy, Chancellor Palpatine, is all evil and stuff. The fact that he wears nothing but black robes while everyone else wears colours didn't tip Anakin off, so Palpatine has to pretty much sit him down and say 'Listen, I am evil.' Eventually, Anakin gets it - and he wants to get back into his head-chopping ways, but he's too much of a sissy, so he gets Samuel Jackson to do it. Awesome! Samuel shows up and gets beaten up and zapped with lightning and thrown through a window - and I guess that shows you what happens when you try to look intense and hard without using the word 'motherfucker'. Palpatine becomes The Emperor from that other Star Wars movie with the Ewoks, and now that he's been revealed to be all evil and stuff, he has to LOOK evil as well, so he pulls on a hooded robe - a robe which seems to be laced with nitrous oxide, since for the rest of the film, he doesn't stop laughing to himself in an eeeeeevil fashion. Just in case you're STILL too fucking stupid to figure out what's happening, his eyes go all yellow like he's a hepatitis-infected Brian May on the '71 Queen tour, and he stops talking properly and starts growling between his giggles. The long struggle for Anakin Skywalker's soul ends with this moving scene - after two and a half films where we see Anakin resisting the temptation of power, and fighting against the corruption of his soul, The Emperor figures out a far more straightforward way of turning him to the dark side:

The Emperor: "Turn to the dark side."

Anakin: "Okay."

So, Anakin decides that if he's going to be a bad guy, he needs a scary hood as well. Apparently, in a galaxy far, far away, there are shops that sell Bad Guy Apparel - including all-black coats and capes with hoods. Anakin gets into his awesome new clothes, but they look pretty heavy - because, all of a sudden, he has his head bowed to the ground and he spends the rest of the film looking up at us in an evil, nasty way. Of course, this might just be Anakin trying to look like a sadistic killer, but surely nobody could be that simple. The Emperor tells him to go and kill every Jedi, so Anakin goes back to the Jedi temple and hacks up a bunch of kids with his lightsabre - which makes George Lucas really sad because if he keeps wasting kids, who will buy the stupid merchandise from the films? Ewan McGregor hears that his old buddy has started going crazy and cutting people up into bar-b-que, so he quickly goes to see Natalie Portman, since she is clearly a fountain of wisdom. They have an exchange which highlights George's impeccable skills as a writer of dialogue:

Ewan: "Anakin has killed younglings."

Natalie: "Anakin has killed younglings?"

Ewan: "Yes, Anakin has killed younglings."

Ewan flies away to a planet covered in lava to take out Anakin - and if you're going to have a Final Duel, I guess it makes perfect sense to do it in the most inhospitable terrain imaginable. If I was going to have a Final Duel, I'd have it in an electrical storm while holding a golf club over my head. Anyway, Natalie Portman stows away and - since she's now Anakin's wife - she has to go and start nag, nag, nagging him. So, they have this stupid, lame-o conversation where she says typical wife shit:

Natalie: "We don't spend enough time together."

Anakin: "But look at my DARK POWER! I shall RULE THE GALAXY. YOU AND I."

Natalie: "We just don't talk enough anymore. You're always out with your friends."

Anakin: "I HAVE BROUGHT PEACE... DEMOCRACY... ORDER... THROUGH MY NEW EMPIRE."

Natalie: "You never have enough time for me."

Anakin gets pissed at this, and does what we all wish we could do - he force chokes the biatch and throws her across the floor, then rants about justice. If Gary Oldman was in this picture, there'd be some applause - but instead, we get boring old Ewan McGregor who lays a rap about being naughty down on Anakin. Anakin has had enough of this shit, so they have a lightsabre duel that goes for roughly seven hours, and ends with Ewan hacking off Anakin's arms and legs and leaving him to die a horrible, excruciating death in a pit of oozing lava - because this is the way of the light Jedi. He also screams 'You were the chosen one!' in a fashion that is so hilariously overwrought and cheesy, that it is hard to know what to laugh at first - the delivery, or the shittiness of the writing. The Emperor shows up and puts Anakin in The Suit - and Anakin promptly screams "MENDOZAAAAAAAAAAAA!" at the heavens. Natalie Portman, apparently, 'loses the will to live' and carks it. I am only guessing here, but I think that she loses the will to live because her daughter is going to be raised by Jimmy Smits, but hey - what do I know? Jimmy takes the sprog and flees, while Ewan has to decide where to take the OTHER kid. He decides, quite brilliantly, that only a cast member from 'The Secret Life Of Us' will do, and so - the other kid is sent to live with Joel Edgerton. The end.

The movie is a piece of shit. Yet, I can't help but be fascinated by the response to it.

Everyone makes note of how worthless the script is, and how horrible the acting is, and how lame the effects are, and how it is mostly an incomprehensible mess, and how they laughed uproariously at most parts - yet it is 'great' and 'amazing' and 'one of the best ones'.

Here's a hint for you, boys and girls - it isn't 'amazing'. It's better than the last two, sure - but that's like saying that a hamburger covered in vomit is tastier than a hamburger covered in shit. If it didn't say 'Star Wars', and it didn't have those overused music queues every three seconds, you wouldn't be rabbiting on about how 'intense' it is - you'd be saying that it is a CGI-infested piece of underwritten garbage, directed by a retard with a subhuman I.Q. Why do people lie to themselves? Why?

And furthermore, everybody - can we get a moratorium on fuckwits repeating the shit they read in T.V Week reviews? The film isn't 'dark', it isn't 'fucking dark', it isn't 'disturbing'. If you think that tripe like 'Revenge Of The Sith' is 'dark', may you rot in hell. It might be time to take the thumb out of your arse and start watching real movies. 'Hellraiser' is dark. 'Maniac' is dark. 'Blade Runner' is dark. 'Ms. 45' is dark. 'Revenge Of The Sith' is a kid's movie. And a shitty one at that.

When I staggered out of the film, I must admit that I felt deflated and unclean. I loved Star Wars as much as everyone else when I was a kid - 'The Empire Strikes Back' is still one of the best American films of all time. But, try as I might, I just can't get into the love-fest that everyone else is so determined to partake in - just because it has 'Star Wars' written on it does not make it good, you fuckers.

But, if we're serious - the film has serious flaws. There is almost no dramatic tension - Lucas fumbles the ball with his characters backstories, and when he loses his way narratively, he throws another badly-choreographed CGI sequence at us to dazzle our glazzies. The CGI itself is a monumental failure - with the typical problems ascribed to the CGI generation, a weightlessness and lack of depth to the images which renders them sterile when they should be alive. Apparently, Lucas sees the galaxy as a hospital ward - a smooth, clinical, antiseptic place with no need for texture or chiaroscuro. The acting is uniformly atrocious - with only Ian McDiarmid and Ewan McGregor rising above the efforts of the others to simply give some kind of focus to Lucas's massive, overwhelming sets. Indeed, with the infinate array of universes that Lucas is capable of generating artificially, he seems simply overwhelmed and frightened by ILM's technical prowess - retreating to incredibly cliched character and vehicle designs that recall the sci-fi art of the late 1950's, rather than anything post-Blade Runner. Which, you could argue, is the point - since Star Wars has always been a pastiche. I disagree, though - the original trilogy is a pastiche, the prequels are far different creatures, spawned from a wannabe-auteur who is so insular and ineffectual as an artist that he can only create from within the vacuum of his own sphere: Star Wars has never been less relevant - or interesting - than it is at this point, because Star Wars is only capable of drawing from, being influenced by, and commenting on... itself. The Star Wars universe may be the ultimate in self-referential circle-jerking - and by trying to generate its own mythology from WITHIN its own mythology, it falls flat on its face. This was my main problem with the film - it was climax without context, repeated for two hours and thirty minutes. Every half an hour or so, there was another sequence which was SUPPOSED to be chilling and moving, and was supposed to make my spine tingle and my eyes water - all the signs were there. Swelling, dramatic music, anguish-gripped faces, soggy, waterlogged camera shots that suggest all the mopey resignation of a dog who's bone has just been stolen. But, in the end, what was I actually watching? Who is Anakin Skywalker? Who is Padme? What is a Jedi - really? Who ARE these people, and just WHAT am I watching? Oh, that's right. I'm watching 'Star Wars' - except that 'Star Wars' ceased to be a cycle of films in 1983, and has since been a vehicle to self-propogate its own mystique, fuelled by a multi-billion dollar marketing empire, at the expense of any semblance of artistry or soul.

Frankly, I don't CARE if you liked the film. Sit back, eat your popcorn, and drink your premix cola - but don't be so shallow and desperate as to suggest that this is in any way 'good filmmaking'. Just wallow in nostalgia - and follow George's orders as he barks at you to bend and spread 'em.

Here, so that we're very clear, are my top 15 reasons why 'Revenge Of The Sith' is a festering pile of shit. For an extended, detailed list - email me.

1. Not another Something of the Something film please, George. A little originality. Come on.

2. No, Hayden Christiansen hasn't 'learned to act', you fools. He's just as much of a dickless airhead as he was in the last one.

3. Natalie Portman. Good grief - the only thing more wooden than Natalie Portman is my penis when I look at Natalie Portman.

4. For a film that's so 'dark', The Emperor sure does a lot of laughing. Someone please shut him up. Thank you.

5. Talk like this all the time, Yoda never did. Only sometimes talk like this, did he. Unneccessary to talk like this constantly, it is. Bad writing, it is.

6. General Grevious. Blink and you'll miss the intro - and exit - of a character that is on all the posters and is apparently an integral part of the plot. Apparently, Lucas hasn't learned since Darth Maul - you need more than 15 minutes of screen time to create a character, George. You fat-necked freak.

7. Airbrushing Christopher Lee's face onto a stunt double doesn't make it any more ridiculous to think that a 100 year old dude can do backflips.

8. So, Anakin becomes a Sith to 'stop people from dying'. Apparently, he'll stop people from dying by killing all of them. So, Darth Vader's a republican?

9. Anakin wastes kids, but Lucas is too much of a wussy loser to show it. Oh, yeah. Real dark. And don't give me any shit about 'the imagination being more powerful' - we both know that is a bunch of crap that pussies use an excuse for when they can't hack it.

10. George Lucas has a really fat neck.

11. Oh, by the way George - you might want to consider this: The multi-squillion dollars you spent on the endless, ENDLESS CGI effects for this film were utterly, utterly wasted. "Revenge Of The Sith" STILL looks about a zillion times less convincing than when the ILM workshop was a bunch of guys with socks on their hands pretending to be aliens.

12. Anyone who seriously thinks he 'had it all worked out before he made the first one' has shit for brains. Fatso has obviously been making it up as he goes along, and - unfortunately - he is too much of an incompetent writer to tie it up in anything but the most obvious fashion. It's just so fucking awkwardly, ham-fistedly done that it is laughable.

13. Catchphrases aren't funny, George. In fact, the only catchphrase in human history that was ever funny was 'I'll buy that for a dollar!' from Robocop - a film that you are too stupid to have seen. We don't need characters telling us that they have a bad feeling about this in every fucking movie.

14. C-3PO is still the most irritating character ever invented. Who the fuck would ever think to themselves: "You know what I need to build? A really talkative robot with a personality modelled on a cross between John Inman from 'Are You Being Served?' and Jasper Carrott." C-3P0 was never funny. In fact, the only scene he was ever good in was in 'Empire Strikes Back' where he is shot into tiny pieces.

15. It was shit. You know it, and I know it. Let's stop lying to ourselves.

Fuck you, George Lucas - you fat-necked motherfucker.

Zero stars. Uncle Dave says check it out.

Posted by David at May 20, 2005 06:46 PM | TrackBack