Thinking about Star Wars V
Yeah, it's been a long time in coming.

So by this point I have seen the movie twice. Once at a light night showing last week, and again the following Friday with my 6 year old son. I know, I know. I took a 6 year old to a PG-13 movie. You may boil me in oil later. I did at least preview the movie first.

I think a quote I read on a forum I frequent summed up the movie pretty well. "If you don't like this movie then you just don't like Star Wars."

I think that is fair, because most of the complaints I hear about Episode III are pretty well applicable to every movie in the series. I think there are fans out there that are just determined to hate everything Lucas does and any endeavor he dares set upon after 1983 is "raping their childhood". Note, I hate that expression with a passion.

Revenge of the Sith was good, it was not great. That's ok because I wouldn't call any of the movies great after the original Star Wars anyway. Honestly, the original was only great because nothing like it had ever been done. It wasn't exactly science fiction, it sure as hell wasn't fantasy, it had revolutionary special effects. In short, there has never been anything like it before and you can't just recreate that magic by producing sequels.

The movie certainly had its weak points, as expected, but it delivered where it needed to. The final scene with Vader was silly. I get that the Emperor had to drive out the last of Vader's humanity, and I understand the purpose of the scene. It was the execution that was flawed. Still, it had the one scene that, in my mind, was essential to making it the transition to the original film. Obi-Wan with the infant Luke in hand, walking in the desert to give the child to the Lars family.

It also had the 2nd scariest lightsaber fight since Luke confronted Vader in Empire Strikes Back. When Windu faced down Darth Sidious, I honestly did not know who would win. I knew what the final outcome was going to be, that isn't hard to figure out considering what we already know. Still, when Sidious struck down the other three Jedi, people we saw who had survived the previous film, I seriously wondered if Mace wasn't in over his head.

I'm sure some people will go to this movie and be disappointed. Opinions do vary. I do think the utter piece of crap that some people claim it is are too bitter and too biased to have arrived at that fairly. Sorry, I've seen some pretty bad movies in my day. If you consider this film to be utter crap, you've obviously been watching nothing but critically accalimed award winning movies your entire life. Call it bad? Fair enough. Cinematic sewage? I think some people just can't let go of the fact that they don't get to define what Star Wars is.