From today's Time Magazine:
Toward the end of Revenge of the Sith, the malefic Darth Sidious advances on Yoda, most of whose comrades on the Jedi Council have been cruelly cut down as the Republic is betrayed and the evil Empire spreads its vulture wings. " At last," the Sith lord hisses, sensing victory over a foe, " the Jedi are no more." Yoda, with all the knowledge and power of the Force compacted into a two-foot fur ball, squints sternly and issues one of his upside-down oracular sentences: " Not if anything I have to say about it."...
On May 19, you'll see where they got: back, finally, to the beginning. The narrative arcs of the grand epic, gracefully bending in a double helix, will be complete...
Again one feels the sure narrative footing of the first Star Wars, the sepulchral allure of the Empire, the confident resolution of a dozen plotlines that made Jedi into a satisfying capper to the original enterprise. True, Lucas can pack little surprise into a backstory that's obliged to complete the saga's circle in the middle. But there's an origami elegance to his folding of the old (new) story into the new (old) one.
...McGregor grows and grays intelligently into the middle-aaged Obi-Wan, and his fellow Scot Ian McDiarmid has a starmaking turn as Chancellor Palpatine. It is brooding stuff, the most violent of the series--it's rated PG-13--about the coming-of-rage of a classic villian. Anakin even has a bit of Shakespearean resonance: the conflicted Hamlet finding the grasping pride of Macbeth, the noble assasin Brutus festering into a yellow-eyed Titus Andronicus...
True believers will debate and deliberate over each scene with the severity of a Jedi Council. The rest of us will breath a sigh of relief that Lucas found the skill to make a grave and vigorous popular entertainment, a picture that regains and sustains the filmic Force he dreamed up a long time ago, in a movie industry that seems far, far away. Because he, irrevocably, changed it.
There you have it, doubters. Time gives ROTS its stamp of approval, and who are we to argue with Time?
8 comments:
I don't read Time.
Neither do I. This issue is an exception.
No one should read Time after they put that crap on the cover. I am now boycotting everything that supports Star Wars crap, Sellouts!
Hey, look, the sellouts and bandwagon joiners are really Star Wars Haters, because it's hip to hate SW. And since most people nowadays are SW haters, the SW lovers are now the counterculture.
And if anyone says "more like weirdo geeks" the Keoki and I are going to pay you a visit in our landspeeder.
You guys are wierdo geeks. It isn't SWs are sellouts they get on Time, they are on pepsi products and almost everything else these days. Everyone thinks Spielburg or who ever the hell keeps making these shitty movies is a God when he's just reviving all these nerds that are todays Eric Forman from "70s Show" because he knew he could make the SW geeks of 21st century. I still say I'd bomb all SW conventions if it didn't include all the smartasses that keep or technology up to speed.
First of all, a good movie it will be. Second, selling out doesn't matter if the art is good. Third: HATER!
LOL
I don't like SW because of the SF thing (and the prequels didn't help), I'm not really into space opera type-shit. I did read the Chrysalids when I was younger, and liked it but even that left me a little cold.
So you're not a hater, just a not-liker. That's perfectly acceptable. Though even if you were a hater, we'd still heart you.
Post a Comment