If you’re reading this then it’s pretty clear my thoughts on the new Star Wars film will be of absolutely no persuasion as to whether or not you should see it. Nonetheless, my immediate thoughts: the dialogue is cohesively basic (or, now, redundant [“I have a bad feeling about this”] if you’ve see the other five films in the series), Ewan McGregor channels Alec Guinness exceptionally, and although the events depicted in this film occur in correct chronology before those of A New Hope, etc., the unparalleled quality of the special effects makes Revenge of the Sith (as well as its prequels) appear discordant in comparison to its three sequels. I maintain that one of the inimitable qualities of the first trilogy is its imperfections, it’s obvious puppets and cardboard droids. Nonetheless, once Darth Vader’s legendary helmet fills the entire screen and he takes his first asthmatic breath, all criticisms should be forgotten for what is a truly epic moment in film.
by Rumsey Taylor | Source: 20th Century Fox digital projection
22 May 2005 6:54 PM | Comments (15)
As I type the lengthy title, Star Wars:Episode III-Revenge of the Sith, I tire.
Then I perk up because I’m glad I saw this movie. It reminded me of why the first Star Wars was so excitingÑspecial effects and characters I had never seen before.
In this last episode, I am reacquainted with characters familiar and nostalgic. On the screen are Obi Wan, Darth Vadar (eventually), C3PO, R2D2, Yoda (who looks remarkably like my cat) and Chewbacca.
I was initially interested in Luke, Leia, Han and their space saga, but after the third installment, I tired.
My interest in George Lucas remained high and still when I catch an interview with him I stop and watch. He is interesting, his storytelling is interesting, though some of his technique is pedestrian.
Let me say who will be interested in this movieÑteenage boys, teenage girls who want to date teen age boys, adult men who were once teenage boys and Star Wars fanatics.
Then there are those like me who just wanted to finish what they started in a galaxy long ago and far away.
I was nearly 20 when this began and I can’t believe the story goes on. Only soap opera storytelling has lasted longer that Star WarsÑremarkable isn’t it?
Much of the stuff going on around the characters confused me. I was never clear where the story was placed nor taking place.
The love story did not engage me. My only interest were references to the baby and my knowing it was twins, a boy and a girl and they would grow to be Luke and Leia.
I should have been interested in the passage of Anakan from Jedi to Darth, but Hayden Christensen, as beautiful as he is, isn’t much of an actor. That’s OK, he’d gorgeous enough to be forgiven.
I was persuaded by the great moral of the moment, that being the only power persuasive enough to move Anakan from good to evil was the power of love.
He claimed it to be love of Padmé, but he gives himself away by speaking the truth of his greatest loveÑhimself. “I cannot live without her,” he admits. It, then, is his life he seeks to save.
More movement required greater acting, but some of the lines were too hard for even an actor of original Obi Wan, Alec Guiness’ stature to deliver.
Now to acting worth mentioning. Ian McDiarmid as Supreme Chancellor Palpatine is very good, quite nice in each of his scenes.
The effects are effective and it’s good to see characters for all of the previous bits and pieces.
As Star Wars ends where it begins a yearning was created in me to see the first episode again and enjoy it from the beginning. Then again, it all feels resolved.
But that was my youth and the nostalgia felt even in this installment seems as though it belongs to another place and timeÑa galaxy far, far away.
This is the first of the new Star Wars movies I’ve felt compelled to see, and while I’m personally not a huge fan of the series, there is something rather breathtaking about its scope and the way it has captured the imagination of millions of moviegoers. There was an electricity in the theater when I saw this on Saturday, and that alone made me glad I went.
What frustrates me about this installment (albeit far less so than with Episodes 1 and 2), is Lucas’ ability to get the big things right – plot, mythos, grandiosity – yet allow himself so many lapses in taste when it comes to detail. CGI once again serves as window dressing in several sequences, the scenes between Christensen and Portman are painful to watch because of how bad the acting/dialogue is, and yet Lucas still manages to deliver the goods when it comes to hair-tingling Jedi duels, Anakin’s rationale for turning to the Dark Side, as well as Anakin’s physical dismantling at the hands of Obi-Wan. What I’m left wondering about most after seeing Episode III are the generations of Star Wars fans yet to be born, who will face a rather harsh cultural hiccup when transitioning from the look of a twenty-first century Revenge of the Sith to the 1970s aesthetic of A New Hope, where for no apparent reason, Rebel Alliance soldiers sport sideburns, films are no longer shot digitally, and creatures are made out of foam and rubber. If future fans take Lucas’ chronology at face value, these films may serve to make the 1970s and early 1980s seem more modern than the era we’re living in now.
I find it disturbing that when Darth Vader is evil in the original movies, the characterization is formed by using the voice of a black man – and a voice that very indentifiably resonates as black. Darth Vader is black inside and outide, both his costume and the voice that comes from within (his only human characteristic) are made as black as possible. Given only one attribute to make Darth Vader resonate as evil, a voice is chosen that audiences can identify as black, playing on the fear of black men that easily connects blackness with evil.
When it comes time to understand and explore Anakin, it is a white boy’s body and voice that we are asked to identify with. The implication is that Darth Vader is symbolically “blackened” after his fall into the lava. When he becomes evil, Anakin becomes a black man. The new trilogy’s quest to find compassion and understanding for Anakin is really about whitening Darth Vader back to Anakin, making him worthy of our empathy – and of three movies devoted to his emotional traumas – only when he becomes a white man, and not a black stereotype.
Overall, the best of the prequels, there is no way Lucas can please everyone, maybe even himself. As a pure fantasy piece of filmmaking, a nice way to spend an afternoon, in a movie theatre to get away from the real world we live in. My only gripe is the complex cgi backgrounds..too much information, detail. It was a bit difficult to notice the main details of a scene with all the additional detail..especially the opening sequence with the vulture droids and heat seeking rockets..
What EL said at 10:40 am…this is a racist’s point a view.
Vader’s voice is meant to be threatening and intimidating..this may be the most perfect casting for a character ever..I doubt they were looking specifically for a black man’s voice. Black = evil not black = black man.
I don’t agree that El’s is a racist’s perspective, and it’s a legitimate and frequent interpretation of Darth Vader—we’ll call it the Chasing Amy school of thought. I’ve always thought that James Earl Jones was cast solely for his deep, bellowing voice, but his race does lend supplemental—if incidental—credence in interpretations of Darth Vader.
I quite enjoyed being called a racist by Fritz, because it illustrates to me how contentious any mention of race is. Absent the usual visual cues I provide in racial discussions where everyone can see that I’m black, the assumption seems to be that by drawing attention to the way Star Wars’ characterization of Darth Vader draws on ingrained fears and expectations of black people I myself must be endorsing that perspective. There is of course a wide interpretive gulf between “this is how black people are viewed in society, and here’s how audience assumptions play into this characterizations” and “black people actually are evil.” My point is that subtly, by changing the race of Darth Vader from a characterization embodied by a recognizably black voice to one played by a non-threatening white boy, the movies suggest that the only people worthy of emotional inquiry, the only people with whom we are asked to engage, are once again white people. A black voice denotes only stereotype -one need only hear James Earl Jones’ voice to understand instantly that he “means” evil. “Man” in our society still implicitly means “white man,” and in moving Anakin from simply an embodiment of evil into a fully engaged character, I don’t find it insignificant that a mark of this humanizing is that he “becomes” white. The message is that humanity is the province of white folks, whose traumas, hisories, and perspectives are viewed as significant. Darth Vader only matters as a human once his face belongs to a white boy.
Speaking of white boys, I can’t help but feel that this whole trilogy has boiled down to “Anakin is a deadbeat dad.” So, after all this anticipation, he turns evil because he loses his wad completely when her finds out his wife is pregnant? Does the whole universe really suffer untold atrocity because of adolescent male fears that his wife becoming a mother will effectively “take” her from him – those dreams of Amidala dying could easily be interpreted as insecure male fears of losing his wife to the babies, of the husband no longer being the full focus of her love. Too bad the Jedi didn’t give him some play therapy at age 7 when they sensed all that anger in him.
It never fails – if you mention anything about race on the internet, and attempt to discuss the topic in a complex way, someone just assumes you to be racist.
Maybe it’s just me, but when I was watching the original trilogy as a kid, I never associated the voice of Vader to be that of a black man, and I never recognized Vader’s voice as being characteristically “black” until it became public knowledge that James Earl Jones did Vader’s voice. After this voice-casting become more well-known (I assume because James Earl Jones became much more famous and was getting more high-profile roles in the 80s), it seems the analysis of Vader as symbolizing black men and the fear they inspire in white culture became more prevalent.
The “Hooper X/Chasing Amy” theory about Vader definitely has merit, but my problem with Star Wars III isn’t that Vader goes from squeaky clean white-boy to “Nubian-god”, it’s that Lucus doesn’t appear to understand the morality involved within his characters. At one point the Dark side is trying to sway minds by saying there are moral shades of grey, but in the next few minutes they are claiming the morality issue to be a black and white cause. I came away from this film thinking that either Lucus doesn’t know what point he is making, or that he has just assumed his audience to be unconcerned with the underlying moral issue of Star Wars.
I’m stunned at these comments. I never thought of Darth Vader as “black.” The voice was deep and menacing, the voice had weight and worth, merit and meaning. This space race, I always thought, was transcendent. I love movies, it’s amazing what some see so clearly that isn’t there to be seen by the next viewer. I always thought Vader was in black to melt into shadow, to appear and disappear suddenly. Other racial ramifications never occurred to me.
I actually thought Vader was British when I was young. It’s apparent that James Earl Jones did adjust his voice slightly for the role. Of course, my interpretation that he is British might be related to some subconscious fear of British colonial rule.
“I’m stunned at these comments. I never thought of Darth Vader as “black.” “
Neither did I, I actually discussed the issue with my family and with a few people at work and they never considered Vader as “black”. I guess everyone’s different in their influences, opinions and views.
It would interesting to hear from Lucas himself on the matter..that would really stir the pot I suppose.
Like Lucas is ever going to say that he consciously wanted Darth Vader – the ultimate symbol of evil within his trilogy – to display characteristics of a “black man”. I doubt it was a conscious decision, and if it were a conscious decision, I’m thinking he has a better business sense than that.
I think El is saying that these creative decisions behind Darth Vader display a subconscious cultural paranoid fear of the black male, not a deliberate decision on Lucas’s part. It’s not like this is a new accusation. Many people feel Jar-Jar is an offensive mixture of stereotypical “black” traits that were unwisely used for comic effect. Again, Jar-Jar was voiced by a black actor.
Just three quick things, and then I’ll shut up. 1. Ian MacDiarmid is one of the best and most consistant parts of the new trilogy- I’d always wanted some backstory on the Emperor, and this trilogy is largely about his rise to power. 2. Sorry EL, black is evil. Always has been, always will be- unless we can somehow escape our instinctual, historical, primal fear of the dark. And the deep-voiced villain is a theatrical staple (I’ll bet it even pre-dates the basso profundo opera tradition). Let’s move beyond these puerile, pseudo-Marxist cultural oppression conspiracy theories…there’s far too much overt racism to worry about. 3. The political element of the new trilogy had me wondering: how much of the films’ content is a conscious reference by the filmmakers to the current US political situation?
In regards to James Lee’s comments, I fail to understand why the varying degrees to which racism pervades a culture needs to be prioritized, with “overt” racism trumping subtler forms of race in popular forms of entertainment. To claim “there’s far too much overt racism to worry about” as a justification for curtailing any further discussion of the possibility that racist elements could have made their way into the Star Wars films points to a deeper threat of race as a touchy red flag most people would rather go out of their way to avoid (while simultaneously placing the burden of inappropriateness onto the person who brought up the racist issue in the first place). And how do we classify “overt” racism, anyhow? Does the Rodney King beating hold more merit than the subtler racist nuances behind much of the O.J. Simpson trial? Does the O.J. Simpson trial trump the Kobe Bryant trial, because it lasted longer and people were able to tune into live coverage of it? What about the current Michael Jackson situation? If a celebrity trial is in many ways as popular a form of entertainment as a fictional film, then can a movie as deeply racist as The Interpreter (the plot of which repeatedly boils down to, “never trust an African in a suit”), not be as culturally pervasive as a more physically violent act of racism is to the specific individuals being attacked? If I were to play the prioritizing game, I would argue that it’s actually the subtler forms of racism in our society that we, the so-called enlightened, need to be waking ourselves up to. The reputations of America’s more famous hate groups and corrupt police forces precede them; in this sense, we can all see them coming. Groups like the KKK can no longer slip beneath even the dullest of cultural radars. But the subplot or Structural framework of a widely released narrative can. And this is where the threat of givens and assumptions which permeates popular entertainment proves most dangerous in the long run, because it is here that we learn the “norms” which become so frantically defended when challenged. El’s points are not the conclusions of a “puerile, paranoid conspiracy theorist.” Conspiracies are conscious and agendaed. It’s the lack of a conspiracy theory that El is concerned about. I’d also be careful about accusing someone of inappropriately linking racism and Star Wars together, while simultaneously mentioning possible links between the war in Iraq and Revenge of the Sith. After all, “there’s far too much overt imperialism to worry about” in this world to be making connections between Revenge of the Sith and U.S. foreign policy.
nancy taylor
22 May 2005
11:10 PM