A.O. Scott gushes over Sith in the NYT: “This is by far the best film in the more recent trilogy, and also the best of the four episodes Mr. Lucas has directed. That’s right (and my inner 11-year-old shudders as I type this): it’s better than ‘Star Wars.’…[it] ranks with ‘The Empire Strikes Back’ (directed by Irvin Kershner in 1980) as the richest and most challenging movie in the cycle. It comes closer than any of the other episodes to realizing Mr. Lucas’s frequently reiterated dream of bringing the combination of vigorous spectacle and mythic resonance he found in the films of Akira Kurosawa into American commercial cinema.” And politically applicable to boot…Ok, I think, despite my best efforts, my expectations are now definitely raised for Wednesday night. (2nd link via Webgoddess.)
3 thoughts on “Say what?”
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Ah, but did you see the New Yorker review? The bit about C-3PO and R2-D2 is priceless (though I admit, I’m not a big Star Wars fan. At all.)
Yeah, The Late Adopter passed that along earlier today. But, really, that’s not a review at all — it’s just Anthony Lane indulging his considerable talent for snark. Hockey Vader? Blender Yoda? Gay Jeeves 3-PO? These are all problems with Empire too, if Lane’s going to be a jackass about it. He’s not so much reviewing Sith as calling bullshit on the entire enterprise.
This sorta reminded me of David Denby’s ridiculous review of The Matrix 3 in its general snobbishness. (i.e. “Why don’t these fanboys read Chekhov?”) The movie may well be terrible (like Revolutions), but do your job and review the darn thing for what it is — there’s no need to convince us of your aesthetic superiority while you’re at it. But, then again, at least Lane was up front about hating all the movies.
And, while I’m thinking about it, Lane’s also got his SF-film history a bit screwy. He may over-jock Blade Runner like a good film student, but A New Hope is generally considered to have started the “lived-in future” aesthetic trend in sci-fi.
As this review of SW:ANH notes, “What was apparent was the changes that Star Wars wrought in sf…production design of the future went from pristine antiscepticism to a lived-in world that was running down at the edges.”
Or, to quote conceptual designer Ralph McQuarrie, “George insisted on rust and dents, to convince people that these things were actually there…Most people envisioned the future to be all airbrushed and smooth, but that’s unreal. We weren’t trying to create ‘the future.’ This was just another galaxy, far, far away.”
Ok, I think I’m done venting for now. 🙂