Initial ROTS Reviews Hit the Internet

Trunks writes "The first reviews of Episode III: Revenge of the Sith have started to trickle onto the Net. Reviews are posted at ComingSoon.net, Ain't It Cool News, Variety, and there are three separate reviews at TheForce.net. The current issue of Time magazine has a review as well. The reviews have all been positive so far, and the consensus appears to be that this is the best film of the prequels and it should satisfy fans who were unhappy with the first two."

I & II weren't that bad

[qw(name)]

I didn't really mind the first two movies. You could tell that they were leading up to some sort of finale with the details surrounding Anakin's turn to the dark side. They were not instant gratification movies and I don't think they were meant to be either.

True, some parts/characters could have been left out of the final production but it/they didn't take so much away from the movies that it rendered the movies horrible.

The Matrix

[Durzel]

the consensus appears to be that this is the best film of the prequels and it should satisfy fans who were unhappy with the first two. ..which isn't exactly difficult given the bar has been set so low by the previous two prequels.

It does look however as if the Star Wars prequels will actually achieve the polar opposite levels of critical acclaim as the Matrix trilogy did (i.e. Matrix/SWEP3:ROTS - great, Matrix Reloaded/SWEP2:AOTC - good-ish, Matrix Revolutions/SWEP1:TPM - dire)

A couple of things to keep in mind:

[Tibor the Hun]

I think it's important to keep a couple of things in mind:

1. The action scenes and special effects will be cool. The storyline will be OK, the fall of the senate and rise of emperor and empire will be interesting. It will be nice to see the "straw that breaks the camel's back" and see Anakin finally snap.

2. The acting and the dialogue will be incredibly stiff. It's Lucas after all. I can imagine that exchanges between Padme and Anakin will be just as meaningless as before. (Padme looked pretty convincing though, crying on one of the trailers.)

If you keep those 2 in mind as you go see the movie, it should be a cool and a welcome conclusion to what started out as a kickass story, turned into a disappointment.

Re:No it won't

[sunnydayjj]

Why is this modded as funny? That was exactly my reaction when I read "...it should satisfy fans who were unhappy with the first two."

How does a decent third movie make up for the crap that was the first two movies. If George Lucas only had enough content for one prequel he should have only made one prequel. Force fitting this prequel nonsense into a trilogy just to squeeze more dollars out of the fans has made me no longer a fan...

ugh

[SuperBanana]

I, along with most of /. probably can't count the number of times that we've seen the original 3 Episodes of SWs

You're right- I can't, because each time was less memorable than the first. Ever since I purposely watched it- probably over 10 years ago- the only times I've seen it have been when absolutely nothing else was on TV, and it was being re-run for the fiftieth time on the SciFi channel.

This'll get me marked as a troll by all the rabid SW fanboys (or the Space Fetishists) with mod points, but hell if I care. Believe it or not, not everyone thought Star Wars was more than just "a nice scifi film from the 70's".

Re:Bittorrent

[MrAnnoyanceToYou]

Ah, but defining success is the problem here. People in the entertainment industry can sometimes.... welll..... Yeah. Remember, this is the kind of people who, in the music industry, were screaming, "We've only had 50% revenue growth in the last three years," when Mp3 sharing was at its height. An industry which, while not hurting at all, continually pushes rapaciously towards more... Not exactly the kind of people to leave a rock unturned in any case they think they can make a little money under it. Especially if they think it's THEIR money.

Re:About friggin time!

[indifferent children]

You don't need to see this film. This is not the film you're looking for.

Re:Bittorrent

[rjelks]

Not to mention the fact that using BitTorrent for any "prerelease" is risky. I remember how many of my friends saw the 1st prequel days before it was in theaters. If you want to test the legal waters with p2p, then Episode III will get you attention. :) I'm sure the studio has tons of people that are looking for that one to pop up.

Reviews like these, and news of the PG-13 rating are startging to get my geeky hopes up for this one. Do we dare hope that this movie could be good?

SW:ROTS reviews

[RealProgrammer]

What was wrong with the first two prequels? People complain about Star Wars episodes not being highbrow enough, or adult enough, or complex enough, etc. Star Wars is supposed to be popcorn, not trout almondine. If you can follow the symbolism to see the film at another level, so much the better, but it's a mistake to look so hard for the deep meaning that you miss the fun at the surface.

I have seen all of the Star Wars episodes as they have been released, and each time I make it a point not to expect anything. I watch and enjoy. The cliche "it is what it is" fits here.

These movies are aimed at multiple audiences: pre-teens, teenagers, adult sci-fi nerds, moms, dads, etc. That's why there's always a Jar-Jar, a tragic love affair, a love triangle, a classic struggle between good and evil affecting the future of a civilization, or whatever.

If you go in thinking you want the plot to go a certain way or for there to be a final explanation of any particular story line, you'll usually be disappointed.

Just keep your eyes open, sit back, and enjoy the popcorn.

Kevin Smith's review

[DroopyStonx]

http://viewaskew.com/news/sith/ [viewaskew.com]

He more or less said that this is the prequel all you whiners and complainers have been waiting for.

He's a big Star Wars fan himself, and he flat out said that it's a damn good movie... darker than Empire Strikes Back... so you know it's good.

Re:Bittorrent

[cOdEgUru]

From what I've seen, the pre-teen crowd might be not going to this movie, which could hurt its success

Not Really.. this is where Lucas Marketing whiz wheels kick in to action..

Instead of kids going to the movie alone, or with other kids (PG), now they drag their parents along to watch it with them. Additional revenue that would otherwise been not there..

Re:Bittorrent

[LiquidRaptor]

Reminds me of the time I went to see Bad Santa, I was carded for the movie, all my friends were carded for the movie. There were big signs saying that it was not a childrens movie and it was not appropriate for kids in the slightest. We go in and there were at least 10-12 little kids in the 3-6 age group. Whats bad is that some of them ended staying through the whole movie while bawling their eyes out. Thats when I realized that some people should not be allowed to have kids.

Re:Poll?

[wax66]

First showing.

The first two may have been a travesty, but the two reasons to go to the first showing are obvious...

It's the last episode we'll see in a long time (probably), so this completes the visual story for all of us. The sooner I can get that done, the sooner I can either cherish the whole thing or forget about it.

The standing in line for the midnight showing with all the nerds like me is just too cool.

Even RT is vulnerable to the "Hype Shift"

[ianscot]

I've liked that site since Roger Ebert referred to it in one of his Movie Man columns a long while back -- but even collected reviews like that are still going to suffer from the Dopplar effect of modern movie reviews. Beforehand the sound of approaching hype skews everything to a higher, better tone. It's only as they recede behind you that you realize how often "3-of-4-stars"-level movies totally stunk.

The reviews for Episode II said the same sorts of "It marks a return to The Empire Strikes Back" stuff. The tomatometer's at 65%. That movie made my kids laugh at how bad it was, more than once. Give it two more years, and watch the tomato turn green in retrospect. I dunno how, but it happens. I swear, when "Pearl Harbor" came out, on balance the reviews liked it okay and talked about how it'd inspire interest in the real history. Back in 2001 the Tomatometer doesn't seem like it had PH at 25%.

Is it just me, or does every blockbuster now come with a pre-release spin fest of "It's so much better than you expect, given that it's this sort of movie, that you should see it anyway"? It's like the stock market, with "retail earnings better than expected" for this April being the headline -- even though the expectations were exceptionally low.

Re:Obi Wan and the droids

[j-pimp]

Which, as far as the prequels have indicated, is true. C-3PO was Anakin's creation, and R2-D2 was assigned to Padme's ship.


He was also attempting to lead Luke on the trail to become a jedi. Ben told Luke certain things at certain times to give him "a certain point of view." If he just came out and said, "Vadar is your father, Owen is your step brother, your sister was adopted by members of the royal court of alderan, and I've been bidding my time here waiting to undo 'bringing balance to the force.' So come with me becasue the entire galaxy depends on you and your daddy meeting and coming to terms," Luke might have ended up seeking out Vader to overthrow palpatine and take his place at his side.


Of course, one might wonder if Vader should've recognized the duo, but then again, there's probably a ton of similar looking droids running around.


Do you think Vader cared about a toy he built as a child and an astromech droid. Those droids, like the name anikan, no longer held any meaning for him. He didnt react to seeing them becasue destroying would mean acknowledging the droids and his "former self" held any signifigance.

Because we grew up...

[msimm]

And I was personally had hoped Lucas and Spielberg knew the significance of that (and maybe artistically and personally had been doing some of the same).

Lucas himself claims in latest Wired [wired.com] "to have a stack of ideas piling up on his desk for "highly abstract, esoteric" films even more daring than his 1971 debut, THX 1138".

Revisiting a classic set of movies a few decades after the original should have been a opportunity to showcase their sophistication and growth, but they turned out more fizzle then a bang. I guess success can be creative failure.

I'll be curious to see if Lucas can climb out from under the machine he's built and make the kinds of films he claims to have intended to. Spielberg I have no hope for.

Re:SW:ROTS reviews

[vector_prime]

As badly executed as Ep1 was, I did feel it was necessary. Seeing Qui-Gon gave me a real sense of who Obi-Wan was and why. The first trilogy is about Obi-Wan anyway. In episode 1, we see him brash and young and not wise at all, we see him flirt momentarily with the dark side when his master is killed, we see him take on a task that even he thinks is too big for him because it was his master and friend's dying wish. Besides, you can't jump immediately into the clone saga without some sort of explaination of the villain. In the latter three the villain was a vast empire, easy enough, but when the good guys are allied to the vast and powerful central government, the enemy, and galactic politics in general, needs to be built up more slowly. The trade federation was a good device, but it wouldn't have worked without Ep1.