THE STAR WARS REPORT: EVERYTHING’S GONE “DARK”

Greetings, Bothan spies, and welcome to the latest edition of the Star Wars Report. It’s the report that put the “ack” in “Ackbar.”

The latest trailer for Revenge of the Sith came out last week, and if you haven’t seen it I highly recommend you check out alt.nerd.obsessive or whatever happens to be your web site of choice for viewing that which you could easily have seen in the theater if you only had a life. Go ahead, I’ll wait.

Now then, even hardened cynics like myself – who are convinced with every fiber of our black little hearts that George Lucas lost what little mind he had left following the implosion of “Howard the Duck” and set out to systematically destroy the franchise so many of us grew up with and loved – have to admit that there were some nifty elements contained therein. First you have Palpatine/Sidious asking “Are you threatening me, Master Jedi?” right before leaping forward like Gollum to take on Mace and those other four redshirt Jedi. And what about the youngling Jedi about to get his a*s handed to him by a couple dozen battle droids? Or Anakin stalking into the Jedi Council backed up by clone troopers? How about Wookiees? Anyone?

There were a few things I would’ve liked to see, like Jar Jar being messily disemboweled by a rancor, or the scene where Anakin – in a continuation of Lucas’ amputation fetish – slices off R2 D2’s thruster jets, conclusively demonstrating why he never used them in the original trilogy (even in Cloud City or on the forest moon of Endor when it might have, you know, mattered). Even so, I have to admit I felt something akin to my old affection for the series after watching that. Gone is the clumsy romantic angle, not to mention the tiresome and simplistic political plotlines. “Revenge of the Sith” looks to be chock full of betrayal, lightsaber fu, and the dunking of a certain whiny bastard into a river of lava. Excelsior.

I know, I know. We all thought Darth Maul was cool too, then were forced to overlook his whopping 5 minutes of screen time after 2 ½ hours of midichlorians, Jake Lloyd, and a final “battle” scene that would’ve seemed ridiculous in a Keystone Kops short. “Attack of the Clones” wasn’t much better, what with all the video game outtakes, so why should we allow ourselves to get sucked in again? What makes us believe things will be any different this time around?

Silly womp rats, it’s because this one will be rated PG-13.

The story continues in part two of THE STAR WARS REPORT: EVERYTHING’S GONE “DARK”>>>