A friend sent me an email...

Happy ROTS Eve!!


This review kind of sums it all up for me; careful, there are spoilers:


http://www.aint-it-cool-news.com/display.cgi?id=20157


meh. eye candy for he terminally adolescent.

Not that I ain't goin, of course.

It’s where all the traps are sprung, all the cards are laid on the table, where everybody dies, all is lost and evil rules the galaxy.


Kind of reminds me of the last election, you know?

Obi Wan never takes Anakin out for drinks and just levels with him. Sits him down and explains fascist totalitarianism. He doesn’t explain why sacrificing the most marginal freedoms to create a false sense of security enables those taking on those additional powers to create a greater evil than that which they fear. Hell, nobody really explains to Anakin why Democracy is better than Absolute Rule.


Again, it seems to be the root of much of the trouble we ourselves are facing. The key, the direction to take.



So, it sounds like there are two really good Star Wars films. The first one, which sets it all up, and the one before the first one, which resolves it all; the one Lucas has spent twenty five years (not to mention wasting two other prequels on foreshadowing) trying to get together. ESB was unfinished, unresolved. Clerks summed up ROTJ best: bunch of fuckin muppets. TPM went overboard on cute; too much cute in young anakin, and too much Jarjar. AOTC had its moments (Anakin's rage at seeing his mother die; Lucas' restraint in not showing the subsequent carnage; but in the end, Lucas couldn't pull off a love story, which needed to go here.


Cool and all, but hey man, in twenty five years, couldn't we have done better? Or is it that all the hopes and expectations set up conditions that are impossible to satisfy? A New Hope was a sleeper hit, nobody expected it to do that well except among the scifi crowd; Lucas was just working with his own expectations and a budget. Like architects who do their best work when young and on strict budgets, once the clientele expands and budgets go up, the work becomes unfocused (I'm looking at you, Frank Gehry and You, Richard Meier).


Give me Narnia. Hell, give me Firefly. Give me a series of Hitchhiker's movies.

Give me free passes for Revenge of the Sith. C'Mon.


Thanks, KE, I'm cross posting this on my blog. Architecture, politics, and Star Wars. All I'd have to do is somehow include music and I've covered the bases.

BTW, your buddy Gilbertson was totally off base slamming Joe Jackson and Todd Rundgren. The Joe Todd show was fun, and both performers made the most of their persona and material. By definition, Rundgren was going to be more eclectic; look at the range of his work. But I do agree that the encores where they brought Ethel back out to join in were the best. "While My Guitar Gently Weeps' has always been about my favorite Beatles song, and the traded vocals, the violin solos- it totally rocked.

There. Now it covers it.