Blog of Bermanism

We all went to see the new Star Wars, Episode III on Friday night. After the disappointment of the last two episodes, we were all a little leery of what may come of this movie. The last two movies not only featured horrible dialog, but an overabundance of computer generated special effects and a lack of plot development. The episodes improved in quality from the first to the second, but they were still not what audiences expected from Lucas. I happened to actually like the first two episodes, but I like anything that has spaceships, fantasy, and things blowing up all the time.

Since we had waited a week to see Episode III, we had all heard that this movie was much better than the other two. Well, the rumors were right. The plot in Episode III progresses at a feverish pace from the point at which the last movie left off. Beginning with the growing friendship between Chancellor Palpatine and Anakin Skywalker and leading to the birth of Darth Vader as we all know him from the original Star Wars movies. The plot development was much better orchestrated in Episode III than in the first two and the CGI special effects took less of the main stage from the actors. Although most of the movie was CGI-based, I felt that the computerized nature of the movie was less apparent.

On the CGI note, there is simply no better group of artists and programmers on the planet for CGI special effects than those at Industrial Light and Magic. Lucas’ group took CGI to a whole new level in Episodes I and II, to the point of being shocking and uncomfortable to audiences. They may have gone a little too far with the Jarjar Biggs character, but for the most part, they were breaking new ground. ILM has further outdone themselves in Episode III. The special effects in this movie were absolutely stunning! The textures and rendering methods used in this film were the most realistic that I have seen yet. Computer graphic special effects generally end up having a robotic, cartoon-like appearance and movement, but ILM managed to breathe life into the characters such that, you might think that Yoda was actually a living, breathing actor playing a role. I, of course, miss the days of Henson’s puppeteers running the Yoda model, but they did a great job with this film.

By far the most disappointing part of Episode III was the dialog and the character interaction. This issue was difficult to pin down because, on the surface, it appeared that the actors were simply doing a terrible job of acting. But, when you look at the cast, which includes brilliant and notably accomplished actors like Samuel L. Jackson, Ewan McGregor, Ian McDiarmit, Jimmy Smits, and Frank Oz, you have to believe that the problem must lie elsewhere. Now, in fairness, I have seen Natalie Portman play a few brilliant roles, like the role of Sam that she played in Garden State with Zach Braff, and, though I have never seen Hayden Christiansen in any other movie than Star Wars, I hear he did a good job in Life as a House. However, since these two were the leading roles in the movie, they appeared to be doing the worst job of acting, by a lot. You could essentially take a nap every time Padame and Anakin were in a room together. Their interactions were stale and robotic and added nothing to the movie, not to mention the fact that what they said to each other was stupid, cheesy, mostly inappropriate for the scene, and totally unbelievable. So, given that there were a whole slew of accomplished actors in the movie, one had to give way to the writing and dialog as the source of the problem. A suppose a chef is only as good as his ingredients. It appears that even accomplished actors, like those in Episode III, have trouble making a believable character out of bad writing. I also believe that since the majority of the movie was shot on a blue screen with no props and very little person-person interaction, that the actors had a hard time getting into their roles. Since they couldn’t see their surroundings and they couldn’t see the person they were talking to or interacting with most of the time, I would imagine that it was difficult to give anything more than a stale performance. Naturally, Lucas has introduced the movie industry to an entirely different view of movie making which takes real-life actors and places them into a computer generated fantasy, instead of the current model which accomplishes the opposite. So, the bottom line is that I don’t blame the actors for doing a bad job acting, I blame the writing and the newness of this style of movie making. In addition, superb direction could have captured the spirit of the characters and turned the acting debacle into something entirely pleasant to watch. I believe the Lucas’ directing abilities died along with Darth Vader in Episode VI, the Return of the Jedi.

So, overall, this movie was very enjoyable. The plot was great, it moved along at a very invigorating pace, and it accomplished what audiences wanted from the movie, the birth of the Empire. Though bad dialog prevailed and the people watching the movie would just shudder at the words coming out of the actors mouths, I thought that this movie was very enjoyable. It certainly added great perspective to the original Star Wars movies and I will go back and watch those with new-found interest at knowing the history leading up to that point. I personally believe that the first two movies were unnecessary. They probably could have summed up the first two movies in about 20 minutes at the beginning of the third movie, but overall the series was enjoyable and I’m sure that they will become the same sort of cult classics that the originals became in the years to come. Much of what audiences found distasteful about these movies is the amount of innovation included in them. The original movies carried with them much the same sort of stigma as these movies, and their success was unparalleled as time went on. I think that as more of this style of movie come out, the Star Wars movies will become more popular. Anyway, go see Episode III if you are a Star Wars fan, or just enjoyed watching the originals, but make sure you see or review Episodes I and II first. You’ll be a little lost if you don’t.

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