Star Wars Episode III Reviews

[Dave's Bitch]

THIS MOVIE IS THE BEST EVER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!,wow omg its so good,the fight at the end kicks ass,wow,thats only words i can think of to describe it right now,WOW


its a must see and EVERYONE has to see it

[Warham]

'Star Wars' Grosses $16.5M in Midnight Run
By Associated Press
Thu May 19, 9:29 PM

LOS ANGELES - Moviegoers flocked to the dark side in droves, giving the final installment of George Lucas' "Star Wars" tale a record-breaking midnight run.

"Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith" raked in an estimated $16.5 million from 2,900 midnight screenings Thursday, according to box-office tracker Exhibitor Relations.

That's double what the Oscar-winning film "The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King" took in during its midnight showings in 2003. The third film from director Peter Jackson's trilogy rang up about $8 million domestically from 2,100 midnight shows.

"This is extremely impressive," said Paul Dergarabedian, president of Exhibitor Relations. "It just says so much about how excited people are to see this film that they lined up at midnight and just got on board and went along for the ride."

After the midnight debut, "Revenge of the Sith" widened to 3,661 theaters for daytime and evening screenings. The studio, 20th Century Fox, said box-office results for the first full day would be available Friday.

Tickets for the film went on sale last month. Soon after, legions of fans began lining up at theaters across the country, many dressed in full "Star Wars" regalia and sporting Jedi light sabers.

The final chapter in Lucas' six-film saga chronicles Anakin Skywalker's transformation from hero to villain Darth Vader. The film may be the darkest chapter in the "Star Wars" story, featuring more violence and a story line showing how a democratic government turns into a despotic regime.

"Revenge of the Sith" is the first "Star Wars" film to earn a PG-13 rating. The first five films were rated PG.

[ODShowtime]

Originally posted by Vinnie Velvet
Oh, and General Grievous. This guy is so cool (see my avatar ) that it was a shame that he's only in this one movie. I would've rather had him in Clones instead of Jango Fett.

Good review, but I don't agree with this.

Grievous was under-utilized, much like Darth Maul. And if you didn't watch the Clone Wars cartoons, you wouldn't know he was injured right before the movie starts and probably think he was a being a pussy when he first appears on screen.

Other than that and having a hard time believing Anakin would go on a killing spree while Padme was still alive are really my only two gripes.

R2 does kick some serious ass, which I thought was great.

[Nickdfresh]

An Interesting Spin From The Buffalo News:

A GALACTIC STRUGGLE

The age-old battle of good vs. evil plays out, giving birth to Darth Vader

By JEFF SIMON
News Critic
5/19/2005


The Jedi master Yoda does his part in "Star Wars: Episode III Revenge of the Sith."

Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith

***1/2
(Out of four)
Rated: PG-13
Hayden Christensen, Natalie Portman, Samuel L. Jackson, Ewan McGregor and Ian McDiarmid in George Lucas' conclusion to the series that changed modern movies. Opening today in area theaters.

Evil.

There's no substitute for it in storytelling. The bible knew it and so did John Milton and Herman Melville. For that matter, so does "Law and Order: SVU."

It isn't that you can't tell stories without a palpable sense of it. It's just that a tale that has it might also find greatness.

It's what makes "Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith" the best, I think, of all the "Star Wars." It isn't just the darkest; it is, I think, the most personal. Quite frankly, it's the only one I've ever been able to take seriously.

There's a reason why Lucas chose to tell us his "Star Wars" saga in such a way that this story came last. This is the story of evil's triumph; the story of how a Jedi warrior named Anakin, in a terrible moment, turned to the Dark Side. It's about the way a well-intentioned young man can turn from Anakin Skywalker into Darth Vader. There aren't a lot of stories you can tell that are more serious than that one.

And, in the process of doing it, he's created one of the best hells in the history of movies. It's a planet of lava called Mustafar. In the history of literary, artistic and cinematic hells, there's nothing remotely original about it. It's just a molten bubbling landscape of angry red fire but it's truly hellish to look at. And, as the whole saga's final battles take place there, this whole cycle, so beloved by children suddenly exudes a whiff of sulfur that elevates it into an artistic firmament that it never began to see before.

Until now, Lucas' best "Star Wars" movies have been great fun and glorious to see. And that's all. It isn't easy telling that to some of those who slept on "Star Wars" sheets and played with furry toy wookies and ewoks as children - not to mention the obsessional true believers for whom the whole complex mythology of Jedi, Empires and Sith (bad guys, we now know) represents a domesticated universe ready for playtime.

But all "Star Wars," until now, were, for most of us, never more than a light show and a giggle. The ideas were fun to toss around - the Force, the Dark Side - but that's because they were already miniaturized so that they could fit into the cerebral equivalent of a pencil box.

Vader always the key

Until now, the great pleasure as we watched the cinematic saga go on and on in six installments over four decades was in watching the cinematic technology explode. God knows, it wasn't watching the unlucky actors who were condemned to absurd dialogue, blue screen calisthenics and, when Lucas was his own director, not a whole lot in the way of behavioral depth and subtlety. (Put Lucas in charge of a Modesto, Calif., community theater production of Chekhov's "The Cherry Orchard" and you'd probably wind up watching a grown man hide under the bed - where he'd frantically call friends like Spielberg and Coppola on his cell phone for help.)

And, too, there were always new space critters to marvel at. And cool new digital places for cosmic air battles. And armies of behemoths, clones, and whatever Lucas and his army of tekkies could dream up.

But all the while these gaudy, sometimes magnificent-looking light shows were going on, there was a tale being told whose center was Darth Vader, the black-clad, asthmatic, half-man, half-robot with James Earl Jones' voice.

And now it's all come home for a finale that moves way up in aesthetic class.

Unlike "The Empire Strikes Back" and "Return of the Jedi," Lucas has liked directing these three final "prequels" himself. He still can't direct actors for frijoles. Give him a seasoned pro - especially a British one (Alec Guiness in the original, Ian McDiarmid here) - and he'll figure out grand places to put the camera while he gets the heck out of their way.

Give him an American ingenue of either sex and he has no idea how to guide them. Hayden Christensen - who plays Anakin here - can act. But you have to see "Shattered Glass" to discover that. The best he can do here is glower while Lucas' camera catches him at high angles to maximize his meanness.

Natalie Portman runs the gamut from rueful to weepy. To see what she can do as a grown-up, though, you'll have to see her work for Mike Nichols in "Closer."

Students of "Star Wars" already know the story in rough outline. But it's satisfying and even moving to see how Luke and Leia are born. And it's even fun finding out where R2D2 and Chewbacca came from. But all that nestles comfortably in the little toy "Star Wars" playbox and has nothing to do with why I think this is the most serious film George Lucas has ever made.



Is it autobiographical?

Nor is it all the currently over-dramatized political implications of the evil Palpatine's (McDiarmid) erection of a brutal empire in the ashes of a democratic Republic. Of course, there are close parallels in dialogue to these Bush years but then you can find those in any era of political battling and creeping authoritarianism. The script could have had pointed resonances in 1969 and 1991 too.

It's vastly more personal than that, I think.

Let me cede that my reading of this final movie theater "Star Wars" (more made by others may come on TV) is unusual. I've read everybody and, thus far, I've encountered it nowhere else.

What moved me so much about "Star Wars III: Revenge of the Sith" is the possibility that it is, in its fictional way, autobiographical; that it's George Lucas' fictionalized tale of how he turned from a noble, idealistic, aspirant Anakin Skywalker into Darth Vader, general of a mechanized army.

It's a hell of a tale.

Once upon a time - the 1970s to be specific - American sound movies were in what is now considered their second Golden Age. From the "Godfather" films to "Chinatown" to "Nashville," they had a creative excitement and daring they hadn't had since the early '30s.

The movie that decisively annhilated that Golden Age was Lucas' first "Star Wars" in 1977. The ugly Age of the Blockbuster that was slouching toward Bethlehem to be born was fully brought to life by Lucas' space fantasy and its attendant merchandising orgy.



Rise of technology

Lucas certainly didn't mean to kill the last great movie era but he did. In 1977, he was a movie idealist with a film editor wife. "Star Wars" turned him into a progenitor of corporate empire. In the ensuing years, he became the most technically influential moviemaker since D. W. Griffith. To this day, his computer animation company Industrial Light and Magic has been the model for a whole species of blockbuster fantasy when it hasn't actually supplied the imagery.

Who, in America, can begrudge someone wanting to make money? Or pursue technological progress?

No one has been more influential in extinguishing personal moviemaking than George Lucas. And I think he knows it. The blockbuster returns from both movie and merchandising have been endlessly corrupting. And he has, in all nerdly idealism, helped supplant cinematic humanity with technology.

Without meaning to, George Lucas has, you might say, become the Darth Vader of American movies. But once upon a time, before events turned him over to the coffer-filled Dark Side (and American movies with him), he was an idealistic Anakin Skywalker.

The irony is, then, that as you watch this huge, expensive, gorgeous money machine complete with Burger King tie-ins, you're watching, I think, as personal a film as some little backyard production whose cost was in six figures. From now on, Lucas says, he's going to make experimental films, profits be damned.

So forget the onscreen process of turning a flesh and blood Anakin into robotic Darth Vader. And forget that Hayden Christensen, under Lucas, can't really act.

Watch him, anyway, in one terrible movie moment, where an immature, ambitious talented idealist unintentionally makes the wrong choice - affirms the wrong loyalty and takes the wrong side with dire consequences for everyone.

And then tell me that somewhere somehow George Lucas isn't telling us his story.


e-mail: jsimon@buffnews.com

BuffaloSnooze

[MAX]

LMAO!!!

My brother just called me and has it on VCD already for me just like the last one.

[DaLeeRo]

I haven't seen this movie yet but i will see it.


You can see even from the tv trailer that this is movie is maybe one of the greatest movies that ever made! :D :p

[Warham]

It made $50 million yesterday, breaking the opening day record by $10 million. It also holds the record for most money in a day, period, breaking that record by $6 million.

And this all on a Thursday.

[Vinnie Velvet]

I saw it twice on Thursday.

Awesome.

Simply the best Star Wars movie since Empire and IMO is better than A NEw Hope.

But I know like to think of all movies as a whole.

Its a saga and it should be treated a such.

Bravo Lucas!

[Soul Reaper]

Originally posted by Vinnie Velvet
I saw it twice on Thursday.

Awesome.

Simply the best Star Wars movie since Empire and IMO is better than A NEw Hope.

But I know like to think of all movies as a whole.

Its a saga and it should be treated a such.

Bravo Lucas!

Better than New Hope??!!

I've got to see Episode III.

I hope your right about it being as good as Empire Strikes Back

[bueno bob]

Originally posted by Soul Reaper
Better than New Hope??!!

I've got to see Episode III.

I hope your right about it being as good as Empire Strikes Back

He is.

[Warham]

I think it's as good or better than Empire.

[Vinnie Velvet]

Originally posted by Warham
I think it's as good or better than Empire.

If its better than Empire (which I really haven't said it was just yet , though I do think its a close tie right now.

I think its because the movie is different.

Sure, we get all the lightsabre stuff, but it seems as if EVERYTHING, not only the effects, but the story, the characters have all just been turned up a notch!

Its like it was Star Wars on steroids.

There was stuff that I would've loved to have seen in the original trilogy that we didn't.

For me, its always been the story that's been compelling. Sure, its always fun to watch the movie blow up shit, but its the story that drives the whole thing.

And Sith has a great story, really deep, a lot of depth that NO other Star Wars movie had before it.

That's what makes it better or as good as Empire.

[bueno bob]

Plus, it's virtually my victory movie. I mean, other than that misstep at Mustafar and my wife dying, anyway. And Obi Wan and Yoda getting away with my kids. And having to be second to the Emperor for all my life, at least until the end. But, I did get to dust off that bitch Dooku, so...it was all worth it, I guess.

[Vinnie Velvet]

Originally posted by bueno bob
Plus, it's virtually my victory movie. I mean, other than that misstep at Mustafar and my wife dying, anyway. And Obi Wan and Yoda getting away with my kids. And having to be second to the Emperor for all my life, at least until the end. But, I did get to dust off that bitch Dooku, so...it was all worth it, I guess.

Yeah, Dooku really bit the dust there. That was some steller lightsabre play there, Bob!:D

[bueno bob]

Originally posted by Vinnie Velvet
Yeah, Dooku really bit the dust there. That was some steller lightsabre play there, Bob!:D

Thank you, thank you...we aim to please