revenge of george lucas

I finally saw the final Star Wars movie last night. Actually, I thought I was the last person in the U.S. not to see it, but there were four others at work so we decided to organize an outing. Imagine that: four engineers who hadn't seen the last Star Wars movie! we, apparently, are nerd-failures.

anyways, my take: overall, it was pretty good. it was nice to see the pieces all fall into place to lead into the next (original) Star Wars movie. In fact, the best part of the movie was the few minutes at the end, with no dialogue. The fact that Lucas is good at visuals and bad (BAAAAD) at dialogue is no secret. I actually heard groans from the sparse audience during the part where Anakin and Padme express their love to each other ("I love you more!" "No, I love you more!"). Yeah, there were other hokey parts too (like the "Frankenstein's monster" sequence where Anakin gets his Darth Vader outfit), but on the whole the movie was light years beyond the previous two movies. At the same time, I had a hard time with the relative quickness that Anakin turned to the dark side and pledged himself to the Emporer--it was just too easy.

Interestingly, as a minor fan of the series I actually felt a weird letdown after it was over; a sense of closing-the-loop, I guess. But after the show we were trying to predict the ways in which Lucas will continue to milk the dry cow: first the DVDs. Next, re-release on IMAX. Then, suddenly there will be new versions with extra footage (like he did with the old movies). Then DVDs of those, etc. etc. ad nauseum. So it goes.