Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith

Dir: George Lucas

2005

***

The last thirty minutes of Revenge of the Sith is exciting viewing, everything before it is as puzzling as the first two films of the new trilogy. The plot holes by this point are countless. It makes very little sense and what the audience was essentially waiting for was what they knew would eventually happen. I wonder if this scenario has or will ever happen again in the world of cinema? I sincerely hope not. I found the Stormtrooper origins story particularly bothersome as plot holes go but by this point I really didn't care, the trilogies link up and we can move on with our lives. To give it some credit though, it has the right balance of dark dramatics, great action and pace the conclusion deserved. Christensen even makes up for his terrible performance up to now in the last five minutes (although only just but better late than never). The mighty Chewbacca makes a pleasantly received appearance and I nearly stood up and cheered when I spotted Jeremy Bulloch in his small scene as Captain Colton. It was also nice to see Bruce Spence in a minor role of Imperial administrator (possibly the best and worst credit ever). Like I said before, the last 30 minutes of the film is quite something. It's just a shame we had to sit through the previous two awful films and half of the last one before we got those goosebumps we'd all been waiting for.

Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones

Dir: George Lucas

2002

**

After Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace  was released an on-line petition was created to get George Lucas to step down as director and to hire someone else, like he did with the first three films. That's pretty harsh criticism, especially as the petition gained hundreds of thousands of signatures. The harsh truth is though that it wasn't a bad idea but in the end it fell on deaf ears. The second of the second trilogy is a tiny bit better than the last film but not by very much. The SFX are slightly better in quality but still way overdone and the character development is still bad to nonexistent. It's saved by the Yoda fight scene, whereby the tiny green Jedi takes on Count Dooku, played by the mighty Christopher Lee (Miss Piggy Vs. Dracula) and Samuel L. Jackson and Ewan McGregor's worthy performances but the 'Attack of the Clones' scene, the big event that fans had been waiting for, should have been better than it was and the love story between Anakin and Padme should have had far less screen time. Okay, so it wasn't quite the incest scene of the first film but the the age gap between the two makes it a little bit awkward to watch and stinks of poor writing and an unfortunate lack of foresight. The middle film in a trilogy can be a tricky one but The Empire Strikes Back proves that it can also be the best. Lucas has undone some of the greatness that he created. 

Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace

Dir: George Lucas

1999

**

After many years of hype and excitement, I don't think it was ever going to be possible to live up to the ridiculously high expectations of the hardcore fans but they (George Lucas) really could have done better than this. The weird beard had already upset many a fan with unnecessary tinkering of the first films and it seems valuable lessons were not learned, despite the large amount of feedback. The first episode of three that would eventually link the trilogies is really tenuous, not to mention tedious. George Lucas spent too much time on the effects and not enough time on the story. I remember people got excited over the pod-race towards the beginning of the film, personally I always thought it was odd, a bit pointless and not very good. Not very Star Wars like. Golden haired brat Jake Lloyd was a horribly Disney-like choice of Darth junior, before Disney even owned the franchise. Elements of the film are just recycled ideas from the first two films and many a poor sci-fi film that has come since (and mostly all were poor Star Wars imitations to begin with). The droid army look stupid and cartoonist compared to an army of Stormtroopers, even if they do shoot more accurately. The biggest gripe most people had was from a character called Jar Jar Binks who is a little bit like Sgt. Jones from Police Academy with a fish/duck face. The story tries and succeeds in some respect in being clever. There is a lot of political talk, democracy, dictatorship, unionism etc but when it's followed by inane action it doesn't really have the desired effect. It does get a few things right though, I liked Liam Neeson's character, Ewan McGregor was great as a young Alec Guinness (which was more important than being a convincing young Obi-Wan Kenobi), Ray Park was great as the original kick-ass Sith Darth (although he does look like a pissed off ladybird) and Samuel L. Jackson is cool at everything he does. Fan favorites from the first trilogy include Darth Sidious, C3PO, R2D2 and master Yoda. Brian Blessed, Terence Stamp and Hugh Quarshie make notable appearances. The problem is that it doesn't quite work like the first film did. It's filmed with an awful blue-screen CGI background and looks cheap throughout. CGI Yoda is not cool and enough with the trade embargo talk. Lucus should have remembered why he chose other people to direct the originals, money had at this point pecked at his creative mojo. It wasn't exactly worth the wait.

Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope
Dir: George Lucas
1977
*****
Star Wars. One of the greatest films ever made or lady serendipity working over time? If you break the story down it's nothing more than the sort of thing you'd expect to find in a sci-fi/pulp magazine, which of course it was heavy influenced by. I could go as far as saying it is a tasteless and rather cheap remake of Akira Kurosawa's masterpiece, The Hidden Fortress (indeed, Toshiro Mifune was almost cast as Obi-Wan Kenobi). I'm not going to though because I love it, more so for all its faults. George Lucas has made one of the greatest sci-fi films ever made. It was called THX 1138. Star Wars is merely the greatest feel-good, adventure space-opera of all time. Can Lucas be fully praised for what has become a global phenomenon though? Firstly, Lucas was initially going to make a Flash Gordon film but then discovered the John Carter of Mars books. With both stories in mind, and because he wasn't allowed to buy the rights, he developed a very similar story structure in his own universe. The basics were there, with each character being based on characters found in other sci-fi adventure stories. It could be said that it was the great Ralph McQuarrie who really created the Star Wars that we all love, his original concept designs impressing so much that they were copied with very little further development. Nick Pemberton and Andrew Ainsworth produced the famous costumes, John Barry and Roger Christian designed and built the amazing props and sets and John Dykstra and his team created some of the most impressive effects that world had ever seen. The story's heroes are a bit uninteresting when you think about it. A naive young man looking for adventure, a princess in need of rescue, an arrogant anti-hero (who shot first!), a giant teddy-bear, a mysterious old man in his pajamas, an unfortunate stereotype made of gold and a squeaky dustbin. Yet, each character is brought to life by what is probably the most likable ensemble cast ever put together. The direction is a bit shoddy when you look at it, the composition isn't particularly good during the people scenes, the now famous editing style is actually rather brash and you really do have to question the eye of a director who doesn't notice when one of their actors bumps his head during a very simple scene. I could write at great length about what I don't like about Lucas and what he did wrong but I won't. Lucas is like a modern day Michelangelo. He's a polymath, a Renaissance director. He created ILM, he orchestrated a film made up of all the best elements available and made something magical. The Sistine Chapel wasn't painted alone, I dare say there is a tiny mistake somewhere too and while I very much doubt any of the cherubs have been painted with six finger instead of five, I think I'd like it just that little more if they had been. Phenomenon is an inadequate word to describe Star Wars.

American Graffiti
Dir: George Lucas
1973
*****
American Graffiti is rightfully regarded as one of the best odes to the 50's (OK, the 60's but you know where I'm coming from). I think the key to its success is that it doesn't set out to tell a story as such, instead it simply shows the way of life and how it was all in one night. Great characters, great script and great Cars. Seriously, people say that the music is the main attraction, and it is good but those Cars are something else. I wonder what Lucas would have gone on to do had Star Wars not have been so successful. This and THX 1138 are great films. I'm not saying the Star Wars film weren't great, heaven forbid, it's just that he has stuck with that and Indiana Jones and not come up with anything else. I wonder if a few great films will remain unmade because of this, I guess we'll never know.