Spoiler-Free Thoughts on Episode III

Just Saw the Movie

I’ve just come back from the 12:01 a.m. screening of Revenge of the Sith, which was fun to watch and will probably rate a close second to The Empire Strikes Back in my books.

Getting in was much easier than I thought. My housemate Paul bought

tickets from the nearby Festival Hall theatre at noon. He reported that

there were already a dozen people — “one of them a girl!” — lined up

outside the theatre.

We showed up at the theatre — an easy four blocks from the house — at

about 10:30 p.m.. I was expecting crowds and queues, but Festival Hall

seems to have taken a new tack. All the theatres, at least a dozen in

total, were slated to show Sith at 12:01. Rather than make people wait

in line, they simply didn’t show any movies that evening and let people

wait in the theatres. It made for a more comfortable and relaxed experience.

The Canadian Parallel

If you check the right-wing pundits, you’ll see that a number of them have commented negatively about the unsubtle jabs that Revenge of the Sith

takes at the Bush administration. Lucas handles this with the subtlety

of Ron Jeremy in a room full of porn stars and pork chops. What might

not be as apparent is the unintentional parallel to the current

situation in Canadian politics.

Telling the story of Anakin’s switching from Jedi to Sith is a tricky thing to do in two hours’ worth of movie,

especially if you’re a leaden storyteller like George Lucas. I’d have

said that Anakin’s conversion for the sake of attaining greater power

was contrived and could never happen in real life…

…that is, if it weren’t for

this week’s real-life example of Belinda Stronach making a quick and unexpected switch from the Conservatives to the Liberals, surprising even her boyfriend Peter MacKay

(the Deputy Leader of the Conservatives!). I can imagine MacKay, who’s

taking time out at his father’s farm to reflect, screaming like

Obi-Wan: “You were supposed to be the Chosen One!“

Aunt Beru!

Let me just say that although she gets all of 10 seconds’ worth of screen time, Aunt Beru looks really good in this movie.  Hot. Makes me wonder why Uncle Lars is so damned grumpy. Too bad she gets killed by stormtroopers in the next movie.

Attack of the Bones

I was beginning to regret not bringing a book or magazine to kill the

hour and a half while sitting in the theatre when we found Paul’s

friends from his taekwondo class sitting several rows back. One of them

had brought a laptop and the Attack of the Clones DVD. The following is a reasonably accurate transcript of the conversation that took place as we watched the DVD: