So, this Plinkett guy--the one doing these hysterical, poignant (and often disturbing) critiques--is currently working on his video review of Episode III. I just deigned to watch that movie for the second time total in my life, and I guess I wanted to use this forum to preemptively rip the film a new hole before Mr. Plinkett gets the chance. My guess is that we'll be on the same page on most of this. I'm not going to dwell on too much--I just want to see if I can strike a few chords with you, my dear readers.
One of the things Plinkett does well (besides being the most creepy film reviewer alive) is that he reminds us of what is important about the original movies. You should know this, because you should have spent time watching those reviews the moment I provided you a link. What, you don't click on links when they're so generously given to you? Watch the stuff. It's really funny, I swear. This dude is very much in-tune to the mythos and iconography created by the original trilogy, and he does a great job showing how George Lucas effs it up royally in the more recent movies. Take, for example, some of his criticism from the Ep. II review. First, he points out that Yoda's mystique has to do with his sage wisdom when revealing the nature of the Force. You watched it, so you know what I'm talking about. What? You didn't watch it? I gave you the link like two paragraphs ago! Come on. So--we see from Yoda that the Force has something more to do with swinging light sabers around. When our little green friend jumps around like a maniac fighting Sith Lords in these movies, it kind of runs that mystique into the ground. Similarly, Plinkett shows how the second prequel shows a bunch of little kids doing the training routine that we always inferred Obi Wan improvises aboard the Millennium Falcon. I mean, the point is that these movies take the ideas we let germinate in our minds for 20-30 years and then...well, damn--I can't quite keep that seedling-plant metaphor working. Lucas takes our natural inferences and then cheapens them. That's the point.
So, this little unimportant internet posting is going to just let you know how that happens a few places in The Revenge of the Sith (anyone good at anagrams, by the way?). See, there are some of you out there who have decided that this movie was "good." Better than I and II? Maybe. Good? Hell no. See, I'm going to talk about the original trilogy for a moment, and you're going to forget anything you know about the prequels while we're reminiscing about this stuff. You on board? You better be. Seriously. We're in original trilogy land right now. We're remembering how we took these ideas in when we watched them for the first-through-fifteenth time, OK?
Remember the power of gradual reveal? We see Darth Vader, and we notice that he's in some kind of crazy armor. We hear his labored, mechanical breathing, and we infer that his suit is also some kind of life-support system. In Empire, we see his little egg chamber, where we infer (I keep using this word, which means I'm assuming we were all capable of inference when we saw these films) that this is a rejuvenation chamber. In addition to needing his machine-like suit, he needs to go to his egg-spa now and again. All of this is keeping him alive. We even get to see his gross-looking eggy head in this movie--but only from behind. By the time Obi Wan's ghost tells Luke that Vader is "more machine than man, now" in Return of the Jedi, we've gotten the picture. The idea of Vader's corrupted body has been planted in our brain and gradually reinforced (unlike Vader himself, the building of the character's myth is quite organic). And now's the part where you reflect. How many of you got the metaphor? Evil corrupts! The corruption of Vader's body gives us this great visual image for how his soul has also been corrupted by the Dark Side. Wow! Good storytelling. And let me ask you--didn't you get this amazingly tragic backstory in your mind about how this corruption happened over time? The reveal was gradual, and, as we infer it, we get the sense that the actual corruption was gradual as well. The more evil acts the man perpetrates, the more battle-damage he incurs. Did anyone get the sense that, even after becoming evil, it took years before Vader was in a full-body life-support suit? Maybe there were several proto-Vader suits along the way. Be honest with yourself, because I'm guessing I'm not the only one who felt this. It never tells us, but the myth we all to build in our mind surely went along this direct, right? Search your feelings--you know it to be true.
Well, turns out your feelings were utter crap. You know how he got that effed-up? After a stupidly long fight scene, Anakin triple-summersaults over Obi Wan, and the good Master Kenobi cuts off Ani's everything in a single swing of his sword. See: WTF? Oh yeah. Then Anakin catches on fire. His ugly egg-mug is achieved in this moment, too. Obi cut off everything but his head and his already-robotic right hand. Am I alone in thinking that this totally decimates that mythology of Darth Vader implied in the original movies? What? Oh good, you're crying because of how lame this is. What? You think this scene is well-crafted theatrical tragedy? During a 15-minute fight, neither of the two Jedi scratches the other. Then, in one goofy-looking, ill-concieved cartoon flip, Anakin let's ALL OF HIS BODY PARTS get chopped off? Sorry for shouting, but that's dumb. Real dumb.
Same principle with Palpatine. We know he exists in the first real Star Wars film. We see him in profile in the second, and we notice that his face is all old and pale and generally vile-looking. Finally, in Jedi, we see the old dude. He's old. Really, really nastily old. He walks really oddly because his body is old and crippled--corrupted, in fact. His corruption is barely concealed. Surely this is because he's insanely old (not, for instance, 60), sustained only because he has vampirically sucked on the Force to sustain his vile and putrid existence. Wait...never mind. It turns out that lightening makes you look old, ugly, and decrepit. Once again, the visual metaphor of evil corrupting over time is ruined. Seriously, you didn't find this scene comical? Or at least sad in the "oh my God what were they THINKING?" sort of way? In both of these instance, it's like our friend George said, "Oh, shit. What have I been doing this whole trilogy? I made Palpatine about 40-60 years younger than he should have been. Also, if the fans don't see Darth Vader transform into the precise way he looks in the original movies--even though it's 18 years earlier--fans will be confused. They might not get that Anakin becomes Vader, or something. And they better see them start to build the Death Star. That'll take nearly two decades to complete, by the way. Not that they couldn't almost build Death Star II in about six years, or however the hell long the time elapsed in the original movies was." I mean, really?
Will I go there? Yeah, I will, because it shows the utter disregard for the Star Wars mythology that's been in our hearts and minds for years. If you think this next bit is nit-picky, then you're partly right. I want you to consider, however, the fact that it screws up the most touching scene to take place in Ewok-land. Anyway, Luke says to Leia, "Do you remember your mother? Your real mother?" No! Don't you dare try to rationalize this backwards based on the farcical plot of the new movies. I know where you're going, and just shut up and think about what that moment meant in Jedi. See, Leia answers without hesitation, saying she was "very beautiful...kind, but sad." I don't even want to post a video of the 30 seconds during which Leia was alive and Ms. Padme-Pants was still alive. I guess two-second-old Leia was so strong in the Force that she gleaned that impression from her inexplicably dying mother. What? Oh, maybe she was talking about Whatsherface Organa, her adopted mother. Because, of course, Luke emphasizing that he's talking about Leia's real mother wouldn't hint otherwise. And it like, wouldn't destroy the purpose of that scene--that Luke is trying to learn something about his own mother, the woman he now realizes is also Leia's...forget it. The movie decided it could change majorly important details revealed during important emotional scenes in the original films.
Trust me. This isn't me nerd-blabbing about minor inconsistencies--this is me pointing out shameful writing and equally shameful disregard for things that we actually care about, i.e. the emotional content and powerful mythology of the original trilogy. Now let's see how much of this is also hit upon in the Red Letter Media review.
