“If you want to be a good archeologist, you’ve got to get out of the library.”

The Indiana Jones trilogy has a rightfully cemented place in pop culture history. They STILL rocket-fast pacing and ADVENTURE! that is second to none. You would think that assembling as much of the cast and crew together to make a sequel almost twenty years after The Last Crusade would yield something, well, awesome. Unfortunately its more problematic than that.

Yes, its time to be an adult and acknowledge that Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull exists.

Plot
Its 1957 and Indiana Jones gets dragged into a Communist plot to secure some ancient, bizarre crystal skulls and harness their power to conquer the free world. Except the Soviets find one of the skulls in the first ten minutes, so its really more of a race to figure out just why the hell these things are important. That’s the part of the story that makes sense. Near the end it goes completely off-the-rails nonsensical.

Characters
Dr. Henry “Indiana” Jones: Harrison Ford can still pull off the proper heroic look in the fedora and bullwhip, and his performance as the grizzled and weary veteran is…probably not a stretch for a grizzled veteran of the film industry. In this movie, Jones gets to play around with being paternal with his long-lost son (Hey, its been 4 years and it wasn’t a very good surprise anyway so the statue of limitations ran out on that spoiler).

George “Mac” Michale: Ray Winstone is playing a variant of the “untrustworthy henchman” that Alfred Molina played in the first movie, except here Mac is in it for the long haul. A Brit with a fondness for gambling and chronically unable to stop backstabbing people, he’s ostensibly with/against the CIA and the Russians. His character elements are as follows: he's greedy and backstabs his allies constantly. That’s henchman level development right there and it baffles me that the character sticks around for most of the movie. I like Winstone, but Mac’s in the movie for far too long and his schtick gets old quickly, because after the first betrayal I have a hard time believing Jones would have the patience to put up with him.

Henry “Mutt” Williams: Shia LaBeouf plays Marion’s greaser son. He’s got a motorcycle, loves combing his hair back, knows fencing (which sounds random, but is decently explained in the movie), and is Indy’s progeny. LaBeouf got slagged for being in this movie, but he’s actually one of the better parts. He’s got a great dynamic with Harrison Ford and injects some youthful energy to a movie filled with a predominantly older cast. Oh yeah, and his phobia is scorpions, but that’s important for exactly one brief scene.

Dean Charles Stanforth: Jim Broadbent replaces the late Denholm Elliott as Indy’s sympathetic office-jockey buddy. A minor role, but Broadbent does it well.

Professor Harold “The Ox” Oxley: John Hurt! Plot-wise, Ox is an old friend of Indy’s who’s the only thing close to an expert on the crystal skulls. He’s also Mutt’s presumed father, so that’s why Mutt recruits Indy to find him. Now Ox has been driven insane by the skull and as a result speaks cryptically.

Marion Ravenwood-Williams: Karen Allen returns as Indy’s once and former and once again love interest. She’s Mutt’s mother and takes a more active role in the proceedings once she’s reunited with Dr. Jones.

Colonel-Doctor Irina Spalko: Cate Blanchett is our villain this time, and like Jones, she is someone who is driven to find truth and dig up lost information. She’s also a phony telepath and enamored with the actual telepathic abilities of the crystal skulls. Spalko wants to use the skulls’ abilities to blanket the world in glorious Soviet Russia. Which puts her in an interesting contrast to previous “smart” Indy villains, because Belloq and Elsa were motivated by self-interest and were simply using the other villains as a means to an end. Its an interesting change of pace, but after its mentioned in a conversation, it never comes up again as a thematic element.

Colonel Dovchenko: Igor Jijikine plays the Soviet muscle to Spalko’s brains. He’s actually quite good, fulfilling the role of a physically imposing Number Two who can mix it up in a fight with our hero and surviving a few rounds.

Visuals
Directed by Steven Spielberg with Director of Photography being Janusz Kaminski. Visually, the movie is all over the place. While it still has traces of the “beautiful grittiness” of the first three films, a lot of the film has gone through heavy post-production editing. The biggest example is the jungle chase, which mixes on-location driving scenes with blue screen scenes to pull off the dangerous and/or impossible. Theoretically this isn’t a terrible thing, but there’s such a disconnect between the location and sound stage scenes that it rips you out of the moment. I’m reminded of Attack of the Clones, and THAT IS NOT A GOOD THING. For the CGI scenes the lighting will often come from an odd location (such as EVERYWHERE) and compounded with lens flair effects and a slightly glossy sheen means that the heavily greenscreened shots look so much more fake and artificial compared to the “real” shots that immediately cut into them. That inconsistency really hurts the suspension of disbelief, especially when the movie digresses for a few seconds to have Mutt swing up into the trees and get accompanied by monkeys like he was Tarzan before returning to the rest of the movie. I can't watch that scene without wincing. This kind of dichotomy is present throughout the movie: A legitimately thrilling motorcycle chase across a college campus has to share screen time with some hideous and gratuitous CGI prairie dogs.

Curiously, the movie is also the tamest of the three in terms of pulp ADVENTURE! violence. Characters are gunned down off camera fairly often in this and there’s never very much blood. In comparison, Indy domes a henchman in Raiders and you see the entry wound on his forehead. To be fair to Skull, several Commie goons get incinerated on camera by a jet engine, but being CG, it lacks the same goon-killing satisfaction as stuntmen with exploding squib packets.

Story
Characters created by George Lucas & Philip Kaufman, Story by George Lucas and Jeff Nathanson, Screenplay by David Koepp. The script is…not as good as the visuals, and there are problems with the visuals. First though, let me say good things. There’s a lot of decent Indiana Jones movie banter, and from the point where Indy meets Mutt to the beginning of the Jungle Chase is actually legitimately fun and hits all the classic beats. There’s a mystery to solve regarding an artifact, a race against the villains to find out what it is, globe trotting, character growth and puzzle solving. The beginning falters a lot with a large amount of unnecessary things, and I’ll get to the ending in a moment, but the middle of the film is actually FUN. If the entire movie had been like that, there might not be a problem. Sadly, that wasn’t the case.

WARNING: ENDING SPOILERS FOLLOW

During the Jungle chase, things swing back toward heavy CGI effects and Prequel-level style-without-substance. Even so, that alone isn’t enough to scuttle the movie. One of the titular crystal skulls is found within ten minutes of the movie, so the actual chase to find another magical plot device--err crystal skull, doesn't actually matter as much in this movie. Instead, the big question the characters are asking is “what does it do?” The answer is a lot apparently, from being able to pick and choose which metals (ferrous or not) it can attract to itself, to telepathy, to mind controlling an army of ants. While the Skull(s) remain mysterious, they work well as plot devices. The movie then tries to explain the origin of the skulls and…fails to do so without making the ending a confusing mess.

The skulls belong to a strange race of extra-dimensional creatures that have been on Earth for a while. Certainly long enough to have an effect on Mesoamerican civilization. One of these skulls was taken away from their lost city by a conquistador named Orellana in the 15th century. So the rest of the “aliens” are waiting for the return of the skull so they can go home. But Orellana only took the skull in the 15th century, so what was stopping them from going home before that? Likely nothing, which implies the creatures are lazy or incompetent. In trying to explain the skulls, the movie only digs a hole filled with eleventh-hour questions and even more confusion than we started with. The previous movies at least had the sense to keep the magical plot device suitably vague throughout.

There’s another part regarding the plot device that is a drastic change from the Trilogy, and that’s the symbolic nature of the artifact. In the Trilogy, the plot device always provides Indy with some intangible reward before it slips through his fingers. In Raiders, he learns to accept the existence of faith because the Ark’s God-lightning blasts Nazis. In Temple of Doom, he learns altruism because he transitions from a mercenary grave-robber to someone chosen by Siva to save a village and destroy an evil cult by recovering the holy Sankara Stones. In Last Crusade, he finds reconciliation with his father by reuniting and together they find the Holy Grail, an artifact associated with healing. In Crystal Skull Indy gets…reunited with Marion? But that’s not something the Skull was necessary for. The skull doesn’t symbolize love (it would look horrible on a Valentine card). Any old Macguffin would’ve done. There’s nothing about the skull or any symbolism involved with it that lends itself to a thematic development for Indy. (Ark=Faith, Sankara Stones=Benevolence, Grail=Reconciliation, Crystal Skull=Psychic Migraine, though I suppose the movie goes with “Knowledge was their treasure” but this doesn’t actually work in the actual context of the film. Indy doesn’t GAIN any wisdom in the movie, he already has it by virtue of having survived a lifetime of ADVENTURE!) Its just a vaguely mystical object and along the way he happens to get back together with his old girlfriend. Knowledge isn’t imparted onto Indy, because by the end of the movie he’s just as baffled as the audience by what the hell just happened. The character who get rewarded in the movie is Oxley, because he gets his sanity back thanks to the Skull, but this isn’t a movie about Harold Oxley, its about Indiana Jones.

Also, saying that “knowledge was their treasure” is kind of bullcrap when the aliens also had a giant room full of actual treasure of archeological significance that gets destroyed when the temple collapses. You’d think an archaeologist would feel at least a little bad about that, even if saving his own life took precedence.

Sound
Original Music by John Williams, and he’s still fantastic. The score is probably the least of the four, but its still very good.

The Verdict
Judgment time. Is it a terrible movie that “rapes the franchise?” Nah, even though that was a funny episode of South Park. Its certainly the worst of the series, but that’s more of a reflection of how great the Trilogy is. Its not as bad as Transformers 2, or the Prequel Trilogy combined. Yeah, I said it. Indy 4 is better than all 3 Star Wars Prequels by virtue of not being full of huge chunks of boring. And its better than a lot of the 50s sci-fi movies this was inspired by because it doesn’t feature people sitting in a lab and talking for 20 minutes or 20 minutes worth of people walking from one place to another because Roger Corman had to  pad out a scene on a budget.  However, the stuff that’s bullshit in this movie is truly bullshit.

I think its more akin to Spider-Man 3, actually. It crams in a ton of stuff that’s unnecessary and weighs the whole thing down. “Unnecessary” is kind of the actual theme of the movie. In stark contrast to the sleek Raiders, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is downright bloated with unnecessary things that drag the movie down like a dehydrated pack mule. There’s so much in the movie that’s extraneous. What was the point of the CGI gophers? The CGI monkeys? The Atomic Testing Site? The skull-faced cemetery guards who run away almost immediately? The FBI agents who act like dicks and then disappear from the movie completely? Any of those things could have been omitted without a single loss of ANYTHING from the movie (though Neil Flynn’s cameo as an FBI Agent was a fun little touch). That’s all narrative chaff that distracts from the distilled core of ADVENTURE! that Indiana Jones is all about. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Very Long Title ends up being an unnecessary film, first because The Last Crusade capped the Trilogy off perfectly, and secondly because its ultimately a mediocre ADVENTURE! film that isn’t actually about anything. It lacks the sincerity, the fire, the joie de vie/esprit d’corps (and any other French loan phrases) that the Trilogy possesses. Its not the Worst. Movie. Ever. Not by a long shot. It is, instead, a forgettable Indiana Jones movie, and that’s the real disappointment of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.

“My boy we are pilgrims in an unholy land.”

1989 brought the closing act in the Indiana Jones trilogy with The Last Crusade. It brought back Nazi-punching, and artifacts buried in the desert and expanded the cast. And proved to be a difficult one to write about because while I love it dearly, there are some things that really bug me about it.

The Story
It begins with…Utah in 1912 with a group of boy scouts, including a young Indiana Jones (River Phoenix) exploring the wilderness. Indy wanders off and spots some goons digging up the Cross of Coronado. Noting that it belongs in a museum, Indy takes it upon himself to steal it from the people stealing it, and a merry chase ensues that involves horseback riding and a circus train full of wild animals. Indy escapes the bandits, tries to show the cross to his preoccupied and distant academic father, and the guy who hired the goons shows up to reclaim his item because he’s bought off the cops. The head thief though, admires Indy’s moxie and gives him his hat. What does this have to do with the plot of the rest of the movie? Absolutely nothing, because even when it fast forwards to the present day of 1938, where Indy finally gets the cross back from the guy in a Panama hat, the boat sinks and the villain dies. Raiders at least had the villain outwitting Indy in the beginning be Belloq, who remained a villain throughout the film. But I digress.

Anyway, the real movie begins in 1938 with Indiana Jones (Harrison Ford) approached by a wealthy art patron named Walter Donovan (Julian Glover, hey its General Veers from Empire Strikes Back!) Donovan’s obsessed with finding the Holy Grail and shows an incomplete tablet with clues to its whereabouts. He says that he had an expert in the field who’s gone missing and wants Indy to find it. Said missing expert? Professor Henry Jones, Sr. (Sean Connery). After a little chatting with Dr. Marcus Brody (Denholm Elliott) and finding his Dad’s house sacked, the two agree to help find Professor Jones. Along the way, Indy goes to Venice where he hooks up (in more ways than one) with Austrian archeologist Dr. Elsa Schneider (Alison Doody), runs into some guardians sworn to keep the Grail hidden, led by Kazim (Kevork Malikyan), takes a blimp ride, gets shot at by Nazis, fights over possession of his dad’s Grail journal with the Nazis, finds his father, gets betrayed by Donovan and Schneider, ends up in the fictional Middle Eastern country of Hatay, reunites with Sallah (John Rhys-Davies), fights a German General Vogel (Michael Byrne) on a giant tank, and has to survive several death traps to prove his worthiness and find the grail.

The Sights
Once more, Directed by Steven Spielberg with Douglas Slocombe as Director of Photography. And once more the movie looks fantastic. The grittiness is dialed back a lot compared to Temple of Doom and the tone is largely more lighthearted. The requisite creepy-crawlies in this movie are the rats in the Venice sewer/catacomb, and aren’t really focused on like the bugs or snakes of the previous movie. The effects, both practical and composite continue to be top notch, and the action scenes continue their ambitious stunts. There are quite a lot of great set pieces in this movie. The Venice boat chase, the one-sided dogfight, the motorcycle chase, and of course the Tank Fight are all fantastic scenes that just scream ADVENTURE. Even the train scene with Young Indy, as much as I rag on it not being essential to the film, is well done and exciting. Just gratuitous. And we also get a suitably gruesome and supernatural villain death, as all good Indiana Jones films should have.

The Cast
Dr. Henry “Indiana” Jones Jr.: Harrison Ford continues to nail his role, bringing more of that humor, charm and indestructibility that made him an awesome movie hero. This time around, he’s also got awkwardness to play with, since he’s often overshadowed in events by his almost equally active estranged father. The relationship between them starts off essentially nonexistent, but over the course of the movie, both learn about each other, gain respect for each other, and finally show some heartwarming familial love. Indy continues to get beat up quite a lot by goons before triumphing, but he’s also outwitted a couple times too, which is a nice flaw (and way to keep the tension flowing). Also, and it’s a completely minor but appreciated detail, we see more of Indy teaching class, and his extensive time in the field causes his academic career to get out of hand. Since he’s hardly on campus and such a popular professor, whenever he IS around, he is completely swamped by students with questions about their coursework and is stifled by a tiny office and is WAY behind on class and paperwork. And so he does something only a professor with tenure can get away with: sneaking out of his own office hours to play hooky. Which, while horribly irresponsible of a professor, is also kind of awesome.

Professor Henry Jones Sr.: Sean Connery brings a tremendous amount of charm to the role of Indy’s father. When we finally meet him, he’s been captured by the Nazis, having fallen for the same honey pot that Indy just fell for. Brilliant but aloof and condescending to Indy, the two have an incredibly rocky reunion and their antagonistic banter is a highlight of the film’s dialogue.

Marcus Brody (Denholm Elliott) and Sallah (John Rhys-Davies): Its good to see both of the characters back in action. Sallah remains the boisterous and jolly digger that he was in the first movie, but Brody has transitioned into a full comic relief character. Which makes sense, after all, it wouldn’t make much sense to keep him as a father-figure when Indy’s father shows up.

Walter Donovan (Julian Glover), General Vogel (Michael Byrne), and Dr. Elsa Schneider (Alison Doody): Our 3 villains hit some interesting points. First, the General is our requisite military man since somebody needs to command the Nazi goons in the movie. Vogel is professional but has a sadistic streak, and there’s not much to the character. Donovan is obsessed with finding the Holy Grail because he wants immortality. He’s already a wealthy man and is quite respected as an art collector. He’s even contributed a lot of pieces to the museum Indy & Brody work for. But Donovan is completely driven to find the Grail and is willing to make all kinds of shady deal and arrange bad things to get it. Dr. Schneider is, like Belloq, a dark mirror of Indy. Like the Joneses, she’s driven by the search for antiquities for the improvement of mankind, and like Belloq, she is completely willing to compromise her ideals to find said artifacts. At one point she professes that the Grail is all she cares about, not the Swastika, and at a Nazi book burning/rally she seems to be full of regret at witnessing the destruction of history (ie books). But the fact remains that she’s working with the Nazis. This obsessive drive causes all kinds of other problems for her and others as well.



The Script
Characters created by George Lucas & Philip Kaufman, Story by George Lucas & Menno Meyjes, Screenplay by Jeffrey Boam. Like I said above, the entire beginning sequence is unnecessary to the actual plot and could be excised. Cut that bit off and you’ve got a much more tightly-contained, roller coaster-fast movie with a lot of heart. I think what really sinks the Young Indy sequence is that they load Indy up with all of his accoutrements in the course of ten minutes. Indy gets his whip, his chin scar from said whip, his fear of snakes, and his hat all in that sequence. Its pretty farfetched, especially since all of these traits aren’t really anything close to character development, they’re just accessories that make the character recognizable. At the end of those ten minutes, Indiana Jones’ personality is exactly the same as it is in the movies. From 1912 to the 1930s, there is no change in Indy except for the actor wearing his stuff and the fact that he‘s punched more Nazis in the intervening years. I’m not knocking that, per se, since Indy is a heroic archetype more than a fleshed out character, but if Young and Adult Indy are identical in character, I’d much rather have more of Adult Indy. That’s the reason why I never felt the need to watch the Young Indiana Jones Chronicles, because I had no interest in watching an Indiana Jones that wasn’t Harrison Ford. Watching something about Indiana Jones before he became a two-fisted professor would be like watching a Philip Marlowe movie not about his Private Detective activities but instead about his frustrating life at the District Attorney’s office. Backstory belongs in the past.

That complaint aside, and I guess it is a pretty major complaint, the script does other things brilliantly. When the movie gets going the pacing and dialogue are both whip-smart, and the way it builds a relationship between Jones Senior and Junior out of thin air is great, as is how the healing power of the Grail heals their broken relationship. There’s even a great Ark of the Covenant throwback joke. The script works so well that by the final shots of the movie, you feel a satisfying completeness to the story and the characters. The heroes triumph (as they always do in these) and their brush with the unknown has left them better people. The excellence of the ending is good enough that it makes up for 10 minutes of gratuitous introduction to a character that needs no backstory.

The Sounds
Original Music by John Williams and its another hat trick of fantastic music. This movie’s particular contribution is the Grail Theme, which is grand, sweeping and a bit melancholy.

The Verdict
If it weren’t for the 1912 stuff, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade would be my uncontested favorite of the trilogy. It polishes off some of the rough edges that Temple of Doom has but just can’t quite hit the efficient perfection of Raiders of the Lost Ark. That said, its full of heart and ends the trilogy with the perfect note of finality. The filmmakers leave with Indy and a crew of beloved characters riding into the sunset, not because Indiana Jones is done having adventures, but because they were done filming them. The further adventures of Indiana Jones are effectively handed off to the audience to imagine for themselves, where he can search for mystical artifacts, bed beautiful women, and punch Nazis in the face in the hearts and minds of you and me forever. That’s what’s perfect about the ending of Last Crusade.

And then 19 years later they made another one.

“Biggest trouble with her is the noise.”

The second Indiana Jones movie came out in 1984 and wound up getting some mixed responses. Up until 2008, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom was widely regarded as “the bad one” of the trilogy, which I honestly think is an unfair epithet.

The Story
We start in Shanghai in 1935, making this a prequel to Raiders. After a musical number (of all things) to open the credits with, Indy is in a nightclub to meet a gangster to make a transaction, a diamond for the remains of his ancestor. The gangster, being a gangster, double crosses Indy and poisons him. A fight breaks out over the antidote, Indy escapes and flies off in a plane owned by the gangster. While Indy and his companions sleep, the pilots bail out and our hero crash lands in India, where the real plot begins.

The real plot is that a modest village they come across is plagued by horrible things. The land is blighted, and a cult has taken away all of their children in the night, and all this because the cult stole their sacred stone. Indy is dragged into the quest to recover the stone because A) it might be one of the fabled Sankara stones and worth a LOT of money, and B) the god Siva himself seems to be nudging him to do this. So its off to Pankot Palace where the stone is, because there lies fortune and glory. And a reborn Thuggee Cult that worships the dread goddess Kali.

The Sights
The visuals by director Steven Spielberg and director of photography Douglas Slocombe continue the trend of “beautiful grittiness.” Temple is actually more gritty than Raiders even, and was considerably darker thematically, so much so that it helped lead to the creation of the PG-13 rating. Darker how? Well, there’s lots and lots of bugs in this, a gross-out dinner scene that ends with “chilled monkey brains” served in monkey skulls, child slavery, and, oh yeah, a guy gets sacrificed to Kali by being locked in a cage, having his heart removed from his chest and not killing him, then being lowered into a pit of lava that kills him and causes the heart to burst into flames. I guess you could call that dark. Its pretty awesome too as a villain-establishing moment.

That said, its not all blood sacrifices and deathtraps, and Temple features a hell of a lot of lighthearted scenes as well. The intro musical is a glitzy, glamorous and upbeat rendition of Cole Porter’s “Anything Goes” that sets the mood for the rest of the movie. From the Shanghai sets to the jungles of India (well, Sri Lanka), there’s a great sense of anything can happen. Indy has not one but TWO comic relief characters following him along, and the action scenes ooze just as much ADVENTURE! as the rest of the series. For set-pieces, this one’s got a raft used as a parachute (not advisable to try in real life), a moving ceiling deathtrap, a bareknuckle brawl with a big Thuggee on a conveyor belt, and the famous mine car chase. The Mine Car chase is a literal roller-coaster made even more impressive when you realize most of it was done with miniatures instead of real people. I’m sure the heavy shadows and lighting helped cover that up effectively, but for years I had no idea there was so much miniature work done in that scene. Now that’s awesome effects work.

The Cast
Dr. Henry “Indiana” Jones: Harrison Ford is pretty much our only returning cast member (not counting the stuntmen). Since this is set before Raiders, this is a slightly different Indy. Yes he’s still the daring, charming, highly intelligent adventuring archeologist, but he’s considerably more mercenary in this. After another fantastic character introduction (walking in wearing a tuxedo and speaking Chinese to Lao Che and making sure he gets his payment while oozing cool), we find out he’s bargaining a rare antiquity (the ashes) for another (the big diamond). Then when he gets to India, he really has no interest in helping the village. He just wants to get to Dehli and go home. It takes an escaped slave child with a scrap of ancient scroll identifying the lost rock as a Sankara Stone to get him in gear. And even then he’s not doing it for the village, but for the money. It takes even more events to actually propel him into actual altruism.

Wilhelmina “Willie” Scott: Kate Capshaw plays the love interest this time and, well, Willie is Willie. She’s a very “girly-girl” who is completely unsuited to any kind of ADVENTURE! She complains constantly, hinders Indy’s progress more than helps, and is basically an attractive comic relief sidekick that Indy makes out with occasionally. She’s not completely useless (I counted two times where she does something that legitimately helps Indy. See if you can find them!), and the scene at Pankot Palace where Indy and Willie are flirting then arguing then pouting in their rooms waiting for the other to cave in and come to bed is actually good comedy (and feels like it was lifted out of some older 60s comedies).

Short Round: Ke Huy Quan plays Indy’s OTHER comic relief sidekick. He’s considerably more resourceful and helpful than Willie. He’s also been with Indy for a little while. I know some people hate Short Round, but I never found him annoying. Hell, he’s got some of the best, most memorable lines in the movie.

Chattar Lal: Rushan Seth plays the Prime Minister of Pankot. A Western-educated, bespectacled man, at first glance he seems like a reasonable regent for a child Maharaja. But of course he’s not. He’s a high-ranking member of the Thuggee cult, but aside from a few later scenes, he fades to the background when the real villain arrives.

Mola Ram: Amrish Puri plays the real leader of the Thuggee. Mola Ram is one hell of a crazy villain. He wants to conquer the world in the name of Kali, and is trying to collect all of the Sankara stones to do so. He’s got an impressive hat, is physically imposing, has an army of fanatics backing him up, and manages to elevate himself from a two-dimensional villain through sheer force of hamminess. He is, essentially, a James Bond villain (complete with molten lava pit headquarters).

The Script
Story by George Lucas, Screenplay by Willard Huyck & Gloria Katz. Darker mood notwithstanding, Temple of Doom continues the breakneck pacing and excellent dialogue that Raiders started. The intro sequence even plays into the direct sequence of events this time, unlike in Raiders where it serves as an independent episode that only introduces the hero and villain. Character development is also well done. Indy’s an archetype, drawn in broad strokes to allow a wide audience to imagine themselves in his shoes having crazy adventures, but here (and a little less so in Raiders) he DOES have character development. He starts out as a slightly amoral treasure hunter, and after going through a metaphorical Hell (seriously, it would suck to go through everything that happens at Pankot), he emerges as a much better person. And the way its done is fairly subtle. By the end of the conveyor belt fight, Indy is actually trying to help his opponent (a particularly brutal cultist) from not dying a horrible death. Of course it happens anyway, the guy’s a miniboss after all, but that Indy even tries to help the guy stands out as being more benevolent than he was at the beginning. The darkness of the mood is brightened by two comic-relief characters, and the villain is just as memorable as any other in the series.

But the voodoo doll thing? I can’t think of any way to defend a Haitian/West African thing being worked into the Indian subcontinent. That’s just kind of dumb. At least its barely in the movie.

The Sounds
Original Music by John Williams again, and again it is top notch. In addition to bringing back The Raiders March, new themes are added, the most noticeable ones being Short Round’s theme, which is suitably Asian-influenced, and the harsh, percussive theme of the mines. The soundtrack is a fine addition to the series. Also, the musical number with “Anything Goes” sung in Chinese is catchy as hell.

The Verdict
Temple of Doom is a very good movie though. Its got great action, memorable characters, and is a worthy continuation/backstory for Indiana Jones himself. More than that, the dialogue is some of the most quotable of the series, and the movie as a whole is a lot of fun. And that’s what this series is about. Fun. Okay, fine. Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom is not as perfect of a movie as Raiders of the Lost Ark, but then again, few movies are, even the other Indiana Jones films. It may be the runt of the Indiana Jones Trilogy, but that’s like saying it’s the smallest of three grown wolverines: it can still maul larger game with frightening power.

Yeah, it’s a weird analogy, but I stand by it.

“Indiana, we are simply passing through history. This? This IS history.”

I’ll admit, taking a critical eye to the Indiana Jones movies is an intimidating thought, because so much has already been written in praise of the trilogy that what could I possibly add except more praise? Well, hopefully it’ll be reasonable, thoughtful, and insightful praise in what turned out to be a super-long update. And it provides an excuse to watch 1981’s Raiders of the Lost Ark again.

The Story
Its really rather simple. Dr. Henry “Indiana” Jones is an archeologist in 1936 who does extensive field work and gets recruited by the US Government to track down the Old Testament Ark of the Covenant before the Nazis do because the Germans might find a way to weaponize it. What follows is a globe-trotting, two-fisted race against time ADVENTURE!

No, really, that’s it. That’s the plot right there. Two sentences and we’re good to go. Beautiful, isn’t it?

The Sights
Raiders is beautifully gritty. What do I mean by that? It means director Steven Spielberg and director of photography Douglas Slocombe take us from dank South America to frozen Nepal to Egypt (well, locations meant to be those places at least) and give us all kinds of incredibly well-shot and lit harrowing situations. There’s death traps, golden idols, a giant boulder, tarantulas, a creepy Gestapo agent, and a bar brawl that ends with a tavern burning to the ground. And that’s just the first half hour. Then there’s chase scenes, Nazis getting punched in the face, ancient tombs and riddles, more chase scenes, a Nazi monkey, the finding of the Ark, Indy having a semi-belligerent relationship with an ex-girlfriend, an aristocratic French archeologist working with the Nazis, a fistfight against the backdrop of a flying wing on an airstrip, Nazis getting punched in the face, a U-Boat, and the constant struggle between Indy and the Nazis over who will claim the Ark. The movie is loaded to the gills with awesome stuff that happens. It clocks in at about two hours, and the pacing and content is just so damn good that there’s really not a single bit of fat that could’ve been trimmed from the finished product. It is, in essence, a perfect example of an ADVENTURE! movie with perfect pacing. And Nazis getting punched in the face.

Some highlights: The South American intro to Indiana going through incredible effort and avoiding all kinds of death traps (and the iconic giant boulder) only to have the idol taken from him at spear point is a fantastic character introduction. The digging in the desert that leads to the discovery of the Well of Souls and the discovery of the Ark of the Covenant is suitably majestic and epic. Even the expository scene at the University between Indy and the Feds who recruit him is incredibly well done. Its straight up exposition, but all of the things mentioned come back around and happen by the end. Its fantastic.

Then there’s the action sequences, and what action sequences they are! The fight with the German mechanic and the flying wing stands out as a great miniboss fight filled with great escalation, tension, and choreography. What makes it awesome is that they essentially made it up as they went. The truck chase through the desert that follows it is also incredible. And these action scenes are done in the traditional “stunt men & pyrotechnics” method. All of its as real as it can be.

The special effects are also damn good. The Ark is mystical/magical, and in addition to the famous melting/exploding Nazis, there’s all kinds of mystical stuff throughout the film. The Ark burns the Nazi logo on its crate. Even more subtly, as the movie progresses, whenever characters even so much as mention the Ark, it causes strange localized atmospheric changes, like a gust of wind or a thunderstorm during a dig. The subtle touches are just as important as the blatant ones, and this does both well. Okay, sure, some of the blue screen effects are certainly showing their age, but honestly, it detracts nothing from the viewing experience because the rest of the movie is so visually amazing. Besides, there’s stuff that was made in the last ten years which has aged much worse in the effects department.

I think part of the reason why it works is because it’s a movie set in 1936 made in 1981 using filmmaking techniques that were not impossible for the 1930s (as in computers and stuff). Lots of locations, soundstages, props, stuntmen, pyro, models, camera tricks, stop-motion. All of it was really done in front of cameras and recorded on celluloid. It adds a…plausibility to it. It’s a direct line to that old Hollywood craft tradition and wears that heritage proudly.







The Cast
Dr. Henry “Indiana” Jones: Harrison Ford completely nails the two-fisted pulpy charm of the character. And Indy’s not even a character so much as an archetype to hang the ADVENTURE! on. What’s Indy’s character? He’s a brilliant, handsome, tough-as-nails archeologist who’s students all love him, hates villains, loves beautiful women, and is terrified of snakes. He wears a fedora and is great with a bullwhip. And that’s Indy in a nutshell. He gets introduced as a take-no-shit guy who doesn’t hesitate to bullwhip a guy who tries to shoot him in the back, so he’s clearly a man of action. But despite this, Indy’s not a Mary Sue character because he has incredibly spotty luck. He always manages to get the ever-loving crap kicked out of him, he gets captured all the time, and the bad guys are frequently able to trick or outwit him. About the only thing that consistently goes right for him is that he’s doggedly persistent and really good at surviving things that should kill him. In short, he is an everyman hero. The only actual character development he gets in the movie is: “Learns to respect the power of the supernatural as it pertains to legendary artifacts.” Aside from that, he’s just an awesome professor who punches Nazis and hates snakes.

Dr. Marcus Brody: Denholm Elliott plays Indy’s boss at the museum. He’s highly intelligent, well-connected, and rather paternal, but he’s past his adventuring prime and has to deal with negotiations and red tape at home. A staunch and charming ally, but not someone who can back Indy up in the field. He, like most everybody else in the archeology business in this movie, has respect for the Ark, and warns Indy to be cautious and respectful of it should he find it, because who knows what kind of forces are at work within it?

Satipo: Alfred Molina in his first movie role! He’s a cowardly and ultimately treacherous sidekick in South America and really only noteworthy for having a long and successful career after appearing in Raiders.

Sallah: John Rhys-Davies is great as Indy’s Cairo contact. He’s a jolly man with a big family and prone to singing merrily who runs a digging crew that gets hired by the Nazis to dig for the Ark (along with every other digger in Cairo). Another staunch ally, he gets a lot of choice dialogue bits. He too gets very respectful when discussing the Ark.

Marion Ravenwood: Karen Allen from Animal House is Indy’s love interest in this movie. She’s the daughter of Abner Ravenwood, an old mentor of Indy’s that was tracking the Ark. He died before the movie, but Marion has a medallion that’s the key to finding the Ark. She runs a bar in Nepal and wants to get back to the states. They have a rocky history together, and she slugs Indy one on their first reunion. Marion’s a great female character. Smart, tough, independent, feisty, handy in a fight, brunette, and capable of drinking most men under the table. God, she’s like my ideal woman. She does tend to get captured a lot, but so does Indy and that’s one more thing they have in common.

Major Arnold Toht: Ronald Lacey plays the creepy Gestapo agent with oily perfection. Sinister, weasely, and sadistic, he conveys enough menace that he doesn’t even really have to do anything physically evil on screen to get across the threat of it. It culminates in a great gag where he enters a tent with a captured Marion and brings out a chain with sticks attached that looks like a torture device but turns out to be a coat hanger. It’s a great gag.

Colonel Dietrich: Wolf Kahler plays the German officer in charge of the expedition. He’s more of the “I’m doing my job but I’m still a jerk” brand of secondary villain. And provides someone who can logistically provide all the Nazi goons that get killed during the movie.

Dr. Rene Belloq: Paul Freeman plays an incredibly sophisticated villain. He is an incredibly intelligent, cultured, and resourceful French archeologist who is a rival of Dr. Jones. He’s the one in the beginning who snatches the idol out of Jones’ hands. I think he’s possibly the best villain of the series and likely a standout one for movies in general. He’s a smug, traitorous bastard, but he’s never uncivilized about it, he’s perfectly willing to be reasonable and possibly even compromise at times. He certainly compromises by helping the Nazis (whom he doesn’t personally like, but they have the logistics and manpower to find the Ark and is ready to disagree with them on various issues). He, like Jones, is superhumanly motivated in his quest for antiquities. Similarly, he’s also got a thing for the ladies, but he’s a bit more lecherous about it (he pervs on Marion when she changes into a nice dress by looking in a mirror at her). And like Jones he also wants to find artifacts for the betterment of mankind. The difference is his hubris. He not only wants to find the relic of the century, but also to attach his name to the finding of it. Glory is his goal, and perhaps he’s also intrigued by that mysterious association with “Power” that the Ark has. He certainly wants to know what it is. He’s an absolutely fascinating character and frequently likable.

The Script
Story by George Lucas & Phillip Kaufman, Screenplay by Lawrence Kasdan. Being a plot-driven ADVENTURE! I’ve already discussed a lot about what makes the movie work, but there’s still room to discuss things. Dialogue is outstanding in this movie, with some excellent one-liners and exchanges (Sallah gets a lot of them). Pacing again should be praised, because everything in the movie furthers the plot and characters and nothing is extraneous. There’s nothing that doesn’t relate to either the next scene or a bit of information that was or will be revealed. It all fits together into a watertight package. Sure some of the characters might be drawn in broad strokes, but they’re all memorable and incredibly well executed.




The Sounds
Original Music by John Williams and it is, naturally, exceptional. Of course there’s The Raiders March main theme (or as closed captioning liked to call it “Rousing Adventure Music plays”), but the other major themes are excellent as well. The Love Theme is sweeping and tender and the Ark Theme is magical, mysterious and carries a hint of danger. Like everything else in this movie, the sounds (including the sound editing by Ben Burtt) are exceptional. Oh, and throughout the trilogy, keep an ear out for the Wilhelm scream.

The Verdict
Raiders of the Lost Ark is an amazing movie. This is common knowledge. It stands up to thorough analysis. That’s like proving its good with Science! Hopefully my pretentious little insights give you an excuse to revisit the movie again and look for stuff you might’ve missed. Hell, this viewing made me look at Belloq with newfound appreciation.

And if you haven’t seen Raiders yet, what is wrong with you?? Go and correct this right now! Its only two hours long, and those are hours well-spent on every viewing.

“It is finished then. You have restored peace and justice to the galaxy.”

And so at last, at long last, we reach the final installment of the Star Wars saga, Episode III: Revenge of the Sith from 2005. The nightmare will soon be over and I might need to wash the taste out with some good Star Wars movies. “But Kestifer!” you may interject. “Isn’t the general consensus that Episode III the best of the Prequels because of the action and for tying the two trilogies together??” Well, gentle reader, we’ll see about that.

Plot
So the epic Clone Wars have raged for three years. Three years? That’s it? I mean, sure a lot of fighting can happen in three years, but its hardly epic when compared to the seven years of WWII or the ten years of the mythological Trojan War, that last year of which became the subject of one of the defining tales of the Epic as a genre. Eh, whatever. So three years into the war and the Chancellor/boss of the Republic is captured and being held in a Separatist flagship during an epic space battle, conveniently above the Capital of the Republic, Coruscant. Our two hero Jedi invade the flagship, rescue the chancellor and safely crash land on the planet below in, admittedly, a friggin’ awesome action sequence that lasts twenty minutes. Some politics happens where basically both the Jedi Council and the Supreme Chancellor ask Anakin Skywalker to effectively spy on the other group. The leader of the Separatist armies is found hiding out on a planet and Obi-Wan Kenobi is sent to confirm his presence before the Republic drops the hammer on the bad guys. Meanwhile on Coruscant, Anakin keeps waffling back and forth on the “will he/won’t he” scale of becoming a Sith to save the life of his secretly pregnant secretly wife. Of course he does, and as soon as that happens and the Separatist leader is killed, the Chancellor declares himself Emperor before ordering the extermination of the Jedi. More violence happens and finally and thankfully, rocks fall and everybody dies, except for Master Yoda (who was conveniently (and luckily) surrounded by Wookiees) and Obi-Wan, who is too awesome to be killed (and also because plot armor demands they survive to the next trilogy). Pacing and Plot-wise, this movie is easily the most watchable of the Prequel Trilogy.

Characters
Obi-Wan Kenobi: Ewan MacGregor continues to be the best thing about these movies. I’m being completely serious. Now a general for the Republic in the Clone Wars (which, I’m not sure how that works that a member of an order that exists outside the military structure of the Republic can become a general in said military unless--oh right, forced plot element because the first movie called him General Kenobi). Anyway, Kenobi continues to possess a warmth and wit that the rest of the trilogy completely lacks. As far as Jedi go, he’s competent, situationally aware without being paranoid and doesn’t suffer any critical observational failure. Anakin is his friend and he is actually concerned about his apprentice/former apprentice’s unsettling traits. Even when Anakin inevitably falls, Obi-Wan still holds out some hope for him, even going easy on the new Darth Vader in the climactic fight scene as he tries one last time to talk a little sense into him. Truly, the badass of not just the movie, but of the entire trilogy.

Padme (Skywalker) Amidala: Natalie Portman again, though with less screen time. Her acting is her strongest in the trilogy (though that’s not saying much) but the character is about as uninteresting as they come. She’s on Coruscant, keeps having blocky conversations about politics and ideology with Anakin (that she continues to not have chemistry with) that are flat, overly simplistic and uninteresting. At this point she’s little more than a plot device; Anakin keeps dreaming about her dying in childbirth and he becomes obsessed with preventing that, whether or not she has any say in the matter. Interestingly, the movie makes it a point so hammer home the “loving each other but also really concerned about the way things are going” point. Padme and Anakin discuss their love for each other, and then a little later, the movie has them on Coruscant in two separate buildings longingly looking out the window across the city and the way its edited makes it look as though each is looking at the other. The scenes achieve the same effect, and if the latter were the only one included, it would’ve been great, but since both are in the final cut, its just redundant and boring. The worst thing that the movie does to Padme, though, is completely undermine the action-oriented heroine of the first two movies. A bad character, certainly, but at least she was a scrappy little survivor. Pregnancy will change that, I suppose, but in this movie all she does is look worried and helpless, and (SPOILERS: though not really since you already know she’s not showing up in the original trilogy) after getting choked out by Anakin, she gives birth to Luke & Leia, lives long enough and then expires. The reason the medical droids give for it is “she has lost the will to live” and a shrug of their metallic shoulders. Never mind the fact that even in our world of less advanced technology we can keep braindead people alive with science, the best these floating mechanical interns can manage is an “I dunno, chief.” It completely removes all heroic credibility for Padme. Sure, a broken heart is a rough thing, but she was a friggin’ Queen in charge of a planet. So Anakin proves that all along he was a rotten apple and she dies because. She. Gives. Up. Yeah, never mind that she just gave birth to twins that need to be raised (because dad sure as hell isn’t going to be a good father figure). So she dies. Not because Anakin’s outburst of rage at her supposed infidelity caused her to die of her injuries (no, that would only have cemented his status as a great villain by having him self-fulfill the premonitions he was desperately trying to avoid). No, she dies because she has to for the plot. How…heroic.

Anakin Skywalker: Hayden Christensen’s acting is improved in this film, largely because he’s supposed to be glowering all the time as he descends into full-blown bad guy status. He displays piloting competence during the first battle scene, which is nice, and there are moments where he wrestles with his obligations to the Jedi and his own dark desires. Still, the audience knows that he’s going to fall from grace (and if you’ve been reading these reviews, you know its been clearly telegraphed from the very first movie) so there’s no tension on that part. Also, the Midi-chlorians get a callback during one of Palpatine’s temptation speeches to Anakin, talking about how some Sith Lord named Darth (I’m not making this up) Plagueis (or however its spelled) was able to manipulate the midi-chlorians into creating life. Cue meaningful sinister look at Anakin. Now, by itself that’s not a problem, but in the framework of everything else swirling around Anakin, it completely removes any and all credibility of him actually being the Chosen One. You can’t be genetically engineered to be the mystically prophesied Chosen One. It just doesn’t work that way. So add that to pile of things the prequel Jedi got completely wrong. It comes as such a relief when Anakin finally does officially switch teams. They even brought James Earl Jones to read some lines when Anakin finally gets encased in the Darth Vader armor, but even his delivery can’t make the lines sound cool. “Noooooooooo!” indeed. The biggest gripe with Anakin in this movie is that they write his fall as basically him being duped into evil, like its an accident (which cheapens the evil that he actually does). Looking closely at Anakin through the prequels, you can tell that he’s obsessed with power more than anything, so Palpatine’s offer to train him is not something that he’s hostile towards (and the resistance he gives it is pretty token anyway). It should be a deliberate decision to cast aside Jedi ideology because its no longer enough for him, adding depth and a “fatal flaw” to his fall, but instead of Tragedy, we get what Arthur Miller called, in an essay I read back in High School, Pathos: bad things happening to a character that aren’t really his fault.

Yoda: Frank Oz’s voice returns and the CGI Yoda is greatly improved, but aside from somehow being able to sense the sudden betrayal right before it happens so he can survive the trilogy, he has little actual bearing on the movie. He does get his ass beaten by Emperor Palpatine though, which is karmic punishment enough for his “Fightin’ Yoda” status. (Little bastard’s broken as all hell in Soul Calibur IV, too)

Mace Windu: Samuel L. Jackson finally gets some real screen time, just in time for him to finally realize the shit that’s going down. Actually, the Jedi in this movie finally begin to suspect that Palpatine’s actually a jerk, and so they start planning ways to deal with him. Once Windu’s got clear evidence of his Sithiness, he basically attempts a coup, which 1) doesn’t end well for him, and 2) completely goes against everything the Jedi have been spouting about truthfulness and lawfulness and the Republic. They even talk about the Jedi Order establishing a “temporary regime” when/if Palpatine gets removed from office so that they, the Jedi can select a new leader that is to their liking. The implications of this, should Mace Windu and his squad of ludicrously-easy-to-dispatch Jedi Council members win, are…not comforting.

Count Dooku: Hey look it’s the fantastic Christopher Lee again as the head of the Separatist forces- oh look he’s dead in the first scene of the movie. Glass Badass confirmed.

R2-D2: The plucky little astromech returns, though aside from one scene where he single-handedly destroys two battle droids with little more than oil and fire is pretty cool (despite being obviously CGI), doesn’t really do a whole lot for the plot.

C-3PO: Anthony Daniels’ droid is newly gold-plated and, go figure, is a protocol droid working in the service of a diplomat. Now that’s just silly. While it is comforting to see Threepio as he should be, he still has absolutely no bearing on the course of events whatsoever and at the end of the movie, Bail Organa (Jimmy Smits) orders his memory wiped, which…makes his entire existence in the Prequel Trilogy COMPLETELY MEANINGLESS. Galaxy the size of a trailer park, right there. Everybody is related to everybody else, just because.

General Grievous: The cyborg leader of the Separatist armies (after Dooku bites it) voiced by Matthew Wood, he’s a well done CGI monster, combining a large, hunched skeletal frame with a nasty cough and an audacious method of getting away from the Anakin and Obi-Wan in their first encounter. He’s also incredibly cowardly, running away from the good guys A LOT. And then guess what? Glass Badass.

Emperor Palpatine/Darth Sidious: Ian McDiarmid continues his deliciously evil performance as the scheming Palpatine. Here he really works his mojo on Anakin, constantly tempting the young Jedi to jump off the deep end. At the climactic point of Anakin’s journey, Palpatine fully reveals his “POWER! UNLIMITED POWER!” and zaps the hell out of someone. Somehow, doing this transforms him immediately into the leathery, wrinkled old geezer that we later see in Return of the Jedi, which I guess is okay, but the makeup effects actually end up making him look ridiculous and actually not that much like how he looked like in Jedi. I’m serious here, the 1983 makeup job is superior to the 2005 job on the same actor. I mean, he’s got a crease on his forehead that looks like he’s got a second ass up there.

Oh yeah, and Chewbacca shows up for a completely random cameo with Yoda. Just because the galaxy is the size of a trailer park.

Visuals/Effects
I am please to say that George Lucas and ILM have fixed most of the uncanny valley problems in this movie. The clone troopers move like human beings now (despite still being obviously CGI) and the critical lighting failure of Episode II has been mostly done away with. It also looks like the sets have a lot more practical props and backgrounds in them, which is a step in the right direction. The action sequences are generally fantastic, with the first battle over Corsucant and the final duel on Mustaphar standing out. Like I said in the plot summary, easily the most watchable of the Prequel Three. The scenes where Palpatine finally enacts Order 66 to wipe the floor with the Jedi are generally very well done as dark, gritty “end of an era” moments as the Jedi are cut down by the clone soldiers and Anakin crosses the moral event horizon into full villain. However, after three movies chock full of idiot Jedi doing stupid things and enforcing stupid rules onto their order that will only turn around and bite them in the ass later, so I was quite honestly torn between feeling sympathy for the suddenly betrayed superhumans being knocked down from their ivory tower to outright cheering on the white armored test-tube henchman with no superpowers as they clear the table for the better movies to take place. If you feel like it, go back and watch those scenes with “Yakety Sax” playing from the Benny Hill Show. If you dare.

Writing
George Lucas alone on writing credit here, and the action oriented nature of the film means that there isn’t much room for people to sit around and mouth bad dialog at each other. Doesn’t mean it doesn’t find its way into it, there just isn’t a lot of it. The Republic of the Prequels is ultimately not a place you really feel like fighting for. The Old Republic is little more than a complacent, decadent society that is willing to let its fate be decided by an army of genetically bred slave soldiers who know no other profession and by genetically lucky supermen with laser swords. That’s a level of apathy that I don’t think even modern America has reached yet. At least the Rebel Alliance felt like a genuine rag-tag group of out-gunned but determined resistance fighters that you can root for against the faceless “The Man.” My hatred of the Prequel Jedi can be summed up with one line of dialog. Obi-Wan says “Only a Sith deals in absolutes!” to Anakin, which is the height of hypocrisy. Put aside the fact that that sentence alone is an absolute statement, there is nothing, nothing, in the movies that show Palpatine as being a man who deals in absolute dogmas and black & white morality. He’s always slithering around rules and ideologies and all that stuff while the Jedi themselves are dogmatically hell bent on enforcing their view of what’s right. Hell, you can’t even say that Palpatine’s really all that bad for the Galaxy. After all, his ascension to Emperor ends a war (admittedly one he engineered himself) that lasted three years in which (going strictly by the movies) the only casualties were clones, robots and the occasional Jedi. After that you get about twenty years of relative peace before the Rebellion blows up the Death Star to really challenge Palpatine. According to the movies themselves, that doesn’t really seem so bad. Its bad storytelling when you have to have the Expanded Universe elaborate to the audience just how bad the Empire is. Pacing is good but the story itself is jammed full of various badly handled shout-outs and origins to the Original Trilogy, as though throwing a Chewie cameo into the mix is an acceptable substitute for ironing out plot holes and throwing aside consistent characterization. The story tries too hard to connect everything to the Original Trilogy, and fails to do so in a convincing way. Instead, and I hate to say it, it comes off more like pandering to the hardcore fan boys, who at this point are about the only people (along with children, who are easily impressed by colorful ‘splosions and fightin’) still left in the “eagerly anticipating” camp.

Sound
This will probably be the last time I get to say “John Williams on the score and Ben Burtt on sound editing” for a while. Instead of quietly cherishing this treasured moment, I will say that the heroic level of quality that these two movie demigods have brought to this trilogy is incapable of being over hyperbolized. If we lived in an ancient Pharaonic society, they would be deified after they shuffled off the mortal coil and worshipped like Imhotep for making the world a better place.

Conclusion
Saying that Revenge of the Sith is the most enjoyable of Prequel Trilogy is like being told you have the most treatable form of cancer: it still sucks to be stuck with it. In the case of this particular movie, it is a step up, but it all comes too little, too late. The movie just kept on digging plot holes for itself when it should’ve just left some of the connections to the original movies to the imagination. As a mindless sci-fi movie, yeah sure it entertains, but here’s the problem with the Prequels; the Originals were entertaining without being mindless. They left the imagination open for expansion of characters and concepts. For the prequels, an overdeveloped imagination is required to make the remotest sense of what’s going on. Sitting down and watching the Prequels in one week has been a painful, painful experience, particularly since I’ve pretty much washed my hands of the franchise since 2005 because I didn’t want to keep coming back for more abuse because “I still love Star Wars.” I do still love Star Wars, but I also refuse to keep being disappointed by the husk its become due to “battered audience” syndrome. No matter how many times you come back hoping it can change, it never will. No, better to go our separate ways, franchise. I’m saying it because its true. Inside of us we both know that. You’ll know it. Maybe not today. Maybe not tomorrow, but soon and for the rest of your life. We’ll always have Empire.

…Sorry, got caught up in the moment, there.

The prequels are completely and totally NOT recommended aside from their technical visual and audio merits. If you’re a fan of good movies, take warning from Star Wars fans, who have turned arguing and bitching about the Prequels into high art (I’ve read somewhere that to be a true Star Wars fan, you have to hate the series now. Sad, yes, but also rooted in quite a lot of truth). If you have children, for the Force’s sake, don’t show them this trilogy first, and if you absolutely must subject yourself to the prequels, do so through another medium. Lego Star Wars is probably your best bet for enjoying it, and I also recommend the web comic “Darths and Droids.”

Its so…maddening. So…infuriating. So…impossible to not want to wish evil upon the world.

What’s that? Tomorrow’s October First? Well, I guess sinister dreams can come true.

“I want to go home and…rethink my life.”

2002 rolled around and Star Wars: Episode II: Attack of the Clones arrived. By now, fans had been burned by the underwhelming Phantom Menace but many were still optimistic that maybe George Lucas was just rusty and needed a movie to shake it off. Well….

Plot
The Republic is in a real pickle. Thousands of planets (this is in the title scroll) have seceded and have joined a separatist movement. Signs point to civil war and the Senate is facing a dilemma as to whether or not they should raise an army. Wait. The government of the largest political body in the galaxy doesn’t have a standing army?? Its established that its not the only government in the galaxy, just the biggest, and while its peaceful generally, there have to be flare ups on planets, ambitious pirates and crime lords chipping away at the innocent civilians. Apparently the Jedi take care of all that messy stuff, but that doesn’t sound like a trustworthy investment for the Republic. The Jedi don’t answer to the Senate. The Jedi don’t answer to anybody except themselves. They have no check to balance them. What if the Republic asked them to step in to stop a planet’s civil war and they say “No. Don’t feel like it.”? But I digress.

Former Queen/current Senator Padme Amidala (Queen’s do not work that way!) arrives at Coruscant and survives an assassination attempt. She gets two Jedi assigned as bodyguards, Obi-Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker. After another attempt gets thwarted, Amidala goes underground with Anakin to protect her and Obi-Wan investigates the assassin. Anakin and Padme get into a really awkward romance and Obi-Wan tracks down the assassin and discovers a clone army being grown for the Republic in the name of the Jedi. Anakin goes home and finds his mother, who dies in his arms. He takes the death badly and slaughters some aliens. Obi-Wan tracks the assassin to Geonosis where the bounty hunter/would-be-killer meets with the Separatist Leader, a former Jedi Knight. Obi-Wan gets captured but gets a message out to Anakin, who gets the message out to the Council and heads in with Padme to rescue his mentor. They get captured, are forced to fight some GCI beasties in a Harryhausen-esque fight scene and then the Jedi show up and shit gets blown up. Cue the beginning of the Clone Wars, a galactic civil war.

Right off the bat, the pacing of the plot is greatly improved. Things keep moving at a really brisk pace and scenes don’t linger nearly as long as they did in the last movie. This is a good thing.

Characters
Obi-Wan Kenobi: Ewan McGregor is the film’s unquestioned badass. Now a full Jedi Knight with his own apprentice and an authoritative beard, he’s competent, witty, decisive and charismatic. He’s a leader and a great choice for the main character. The strongest scenes all involve him and he just delivers a rock solid performance and can handle acting with CGI all around him incredibly well. It is no exaggeration to say that he carries the entire movie on his shoulders, and for that, I salute him.

Senator Padme Amidala: Natalie Portman returns and her performance is improved, though still not great. I’m not sure what went wrong because I’ve seen her act well in other movies. Anyway, her term as Queen ended (wait, Queens definitely DO NOT work that way) she is now a Senator and fiercely opposed to the formation of a Grand Army of the Republic, despite the opening title crawl stating that THOUSANDS of dissatisfied planets have left the Republic. Clearly, diplomacy has already failed and the Republic would be stupid not to start mustering an army for its own defense if the Separatists start getting ideas. Also, her unilateral opposition to an army completely ignores the lessons the character has learned in the previous movie: There, she ended up completely disregarding prudence and diplomacy after a few days at the capital in favor of storming her planet like a cowboy to reassert her powerbase while a large army of allied aliens fought and died so she could accomplish this. This “dedication” to peace is clearly untrue, but then again, she’s a politician. Anyway, for reasons never ever made truly clear as to why she’s such an important target, someone’s trying to assassinate her, which ham fistedly sends Anakin to be her bodyguard and they have a terribly developed romance together because the plot demands they get it on so we can get Luke and Leia. Oh, and where the character fails utterly is on Tatooine when Anakin comes back from finding his mother. He killed the Tusken Raiders responsible for her death and confesses to killing an entire camp: men, women, children. All Padme does is essentially say “Well, we all get mad sometimes.” A wellspring of compassion, she is. She’s much more action capable this time around, but the character is still a flat and ultimately unsympathetic aristocrat.

Anakin Skywalker: Hayden Christensen glowers and sulks his way through this movie (can‘t really blame him since so many people still call him Ani to his adult face), but everybody already knew that. The romance between Anakin and Padme is unwatchable in its lack of chemistry, but everybody already knew that. Let’s talk about the character himself. Anakin is Obi-Wan’s Padawan apprentice (with standard issue stupid haircut). He’s got a reputation for impulsiveness, recklessness and unreliability. Obviously he’s the perfect bodyguard for a senator. He’s also disturbingly obsessed with Padme. He says that he’s been thinking about her non-stop for the ten years after they first met (she of course, barely recognizes him). That’s really not a heartwarming trait, considering he was ten when he met her. Of course, the Jedi are not permitted to marry, which has been completely pulled out of nowhere just so there can be extra drama and so the lovers can be star-crossed. Worse, Anakin is clearly a mentally unbalanced individual. He is having vivid nightmares about his mother dying that grate on him so much that despite his forced and awkward love for Padme, he clearly expresses that he will abandon his post as her bodyguard so he can travel to Tatooine on the off chance that he might find his mother. There is no negotiation involved, he’s just polite enough to say that he’s leaving her, whether the assassins know where Padme is or not. Of course, she agrees to go with him because of the almighty plot. Throughout the film he’s moody, selfish, unreliable and defensive to the point of hostility, all good traits for the villain he will become, but the movie insists on painting him in a heroic light. It doesn’t work because instead it paints all the characters surrounding him as incompetents who persist in giving him crucial missions that will only drive him further over the edge into insanity. And speaking of insanity, the Jedi Council knew where his mother was this entire time: Tatooine. You would think that the mother of the “Chosen One” would be a person of interest for them to find and bring in for a nice chat. It would take like one Jedi with a wallet to buy her freedom. Its not like they couldn’t pony up the money.

Mace Windu: Samuel L. Jackson returns as the mean looking Jedi Master. I normally really like Jackson, but here the lines he’s given just make the character echo Yoda most of the time still. He also gets a lot of lines where he expresses absolute incredulity that the Jedi might possibly not have everything under control.

Yoda: Oh man, this is gonna be weird. For the first time in the franchise, Yoda is completely CGI. The model is detailed and a lot of work went into it, but there’s something off about the character visually. Frank Oz’ voice is still great, but Yoda just doesn’t look right, especially considering that in puppet form he was a triumphant success. Then again, a puppet wouldn’t be able to get into a lightsaber duel at the end. I honestly don’t have words for how much I hate the concept of a Fightin’ Yoda. Visually, sure its kind of cool, but on a philosophical level, Yoda was presented as a Zen like master of the Force, the Star Wars equivalent of Buddha in the original trilogy. A figure so powerful and so connected to the Force that he could accomplish more with the wave of a hand than an army of Jedi could. I realize this is drifting into a rant, but personally, the idea of Yoda fighting was as abhorrent to the perception of the character as Ghandi firing a rocket launcher. It made no sense.

C-3PO: Anthony Daniels returns, and so does the protocol droid’s body, a battered, silver casing that at least looks like him. He’s there and what he does is okay, but he serves absolutely no purpose whatsoever for the story. None.

Senator Jar Jar Binks: Oh God, the bastard’s a Senator. Did they hate him so much on Naboo that they figured the only way to get him off-planet was to send him to the Capital? You know, like bumping him up to a desk job? The role of the character is drastically diminished, but he’s still there, and when he speaks the sound grates on the ears with the fury of a thousand fingernails on a thousand chalkboards. Padme gives him a simple directive while she leaves Coruscant: make sure her stance on the army is represented. Instead, Jar Jar directly endorses the creation of the army. Now, I’m all for a standing army for a Republic the size of this one, but we all know how well this is going to end, and it makes Jar Jar a backstabbing douche for betraying the ideals of a friend. Moreover, Jar Jar fulfills a Neville Chamberlain-like role, proudly doing a Neville Chamberlain “Peace in our time” kind of thing before all hell breaks loose. While this amuses me to no end, it does not bode well that a character designed to appeal toward kids becomes an example of political unreliability and appeasement. You know, for the kids.

Count Dooku/Darth Tyrannus: The always awesome Christopher Lee plays the leader of the Separatists, a classy cape wearing nobleman and smooth talker who used to be a Jedi Knight. Sadly, the character doesn’t get any more developed than that and spends most of the movie as a name lurking in the background.

Jango Fett: Temuera Morrison plays a bounty hunter wearing very familiar looking armor. Turns out he’s both the guy behind the assassination plot AND the genetic template for the Clone Army of the Republic, though he’s working for Dooku. Clearly he’s playing both sides in the conflict, but the way it comes off is just confusing and never fully explained. Jango is a type of character that has been showing up a lot in Star Wars. I shall call him a Glass Badass: a character with a really eye-catching design, mysterious background, and interesting (if gimmicky) weapons and/or skills. The character will do something incredibly awesome and badass during his first encounter with a hero, but after that, he gets sidelined because of the goals of the Plot and then gets unceremoniously killed in a punk-ass manner that completely negates any badass achievements. Jango, who can capably fend off Obi-Wan on a landing platform in the rain, is just such a glass badass. His grown up (in the original movies) clone-baby Boba Fett is another example and so is Darth Maul from The Phantom Menace.

Supreme Chancellor Palpatine: Now the boss of the Republic, Ian McDiarmid turns in a great performance as the duplicitous, lying mastermind who is behind a large and extremely complicated plot to usurp control of the Republic. As far as the prequels go, he’s really been the most interesting villain, without question.

Visuals/Effects
On paper (and I’m sure the storyboards as well) George Lucas’ visual ambitions make sense. Vistas are stunning, action is impressive and the CGI work has an incredible level of craftsmanship behind it. However, there was always something that bothered me about this movie, and I’ve finally figured it out. There is a concept called the “Uncanny Valley” which in brief states that (originally it was robots, but movie effects can also apply) the more something looks human, the more favorably people will receive it, but only up to a certain point. Thus, the polygonal video game characters of the late 90s are more likable than the chunky pixels of the Atari systems of the 80s. However, there reaches a point where human imitation becomes so uncanny that it becomes unsettling because if its not a 1:1 match for human behavior, it becomes really, really disturbing. Example: The Droid Army of the Separatists are clearly meant to be obviously mechanical, but also humanoid in basic appearance (arms, legs, heads). They look fine in the movie, looking like how they are intended: mechanical, slightly comical goons. The clone troopers are meant to be cloned humans, but they are also entirely CGI and encased in white armor that foreshadows the Stormtroopers. The modeling on them is extremely detailed, but they are also disturbingly off. The way they move is jerky and puppet-like, the rendering on their armor is just a little too clean and slick for a universe famous for its weathered look. The visors are wayyyyyy too shiny. In short, they exist in the uncanny valley. This is a shame, because it could’ve been helped a little bit by actually making up some armor for extras to wear. It would help a lot of scenes (and probably would’ve been cheaper).

Actually I'm going to go out on a limb and say the entire movie takes place in a place like the Uncanny Valley. There’s something off about Yoda. The clones don’t move like natural humans. But what really messes up the visual effect of the movie is how the lighting of scenes goes into the valley. Scenes shot on normal sets or exteriors have natural, reasonable lighting that looks perfectly fine. Most of the movie however was shot on blue/green screen soundstages with minimal props and backgrounds. The obvious problem with this is that not all actors are equally adept at handling an entirely blue screen set (MacGregor can though). The more subtle issue is the lighting. The characters are lit one way, and the CGI details/backgrounds/etc. are lit another and the twain shall not synch up. The end result is usually a really bright aura or corona of light surrounding the actors that is completely unnatural in an otherwise plausible scenario. I’m not saying the lighting is bad for the entire movie (sometimes the lighting is fantastic, like in the duel between Anakin and Dooku), but it pops up so damn much that its impossible to let it slide.

Writing
Jonathan Hales helped Lucas on the script this time around, and while the overall pace of the movie is a tremendous improvement over the last, the writing is not. Characters that are supposedly competent play a game of “catch the idiot ball” for the sake of fitting the plot into the established trilogy and then the romance. Ugh. The romance between Anakin and Padme is filled with so much purple prose that you’d think it was bad fan fiction. Dialog is usually stilted and characters often start blabbing off how they feel and the political discussions are painful to listen to.

Sound
John Williams on the score and Ben Burtt on sound editing. Oh if only the rest of the movie was as reliable and solid as these two heroes. Still, I actually do have to fault the sound editing on one small point. Oh, and spoilers, I suppose. Anyway, there’s a point where Yoda is meditating and hear’s Qui-Gon Jinn’s voice call out “Anakin! Anakin! Noooo!” The “Anakin” parts are fine and in Liam Neeson’s voice, but the Noooo is a pained and garbled sound that doesn’t match up with Neeson’s voice in the least. Its…a botched moment and jars you out of the tension of the scene. Oh God, even the sound editing has something off…

Conclusion
If it sounds like I’m being harsher on Episode II than Episode I, its because I am. Being harsher. While the plot pacing has been noticeably remedied, the rest of the movie suffers from generally worse dialog and generally terrible character development. The plot holes in the first movie, while abundant, aren’t as offensive to the continuity of the saga as the ones in this film, which are just digging deeper holes. We are told that this is supposed to be Anakin at the beginning of his heroic prime and he comes off as a petulant loose cannon who’s only real love is the power to do what he wants and is just waiting for an excuse to explode. The visual effects of the movie may be the biggest selling point of the film, but that’s a lateral move at best compared to the last film. The over-reliance on (admittedly very well done) CGI sterilizes the feel of the Star Wars universe, giving it a polished unreality that is directly at odds with its vaunted “lived-in galaxy” feel. I can’t even say that the eye candy is improved because of the prevalence of the uncanny valley. Only “recommended” for the truly hardcore fans, and even then it’s still a disappointment.

“The ability to speak does not make you intelligent. Now get out of here.”

Fifty reviews ago, we (in the royal sense) started this insane project of breaking down and analyzing movies and their component parts with a franchise that was near and dear to my heart. If you would’ve asked me ten years ago what my favorite movie franchise was, without hesitation I would’ve answered Star Wars. Of course, that was 1999 and I was sixteen and…things began to change. 1999 was the year of the hotly anticipated return of Star Wars with Episode I: The Phantom Menace. Before the movie was released the anticipation was at such a fever pitch that you would’ve thought it was the Nerd Rapture, and I was one of the faithful. Then the movie came out and the world found itself scratching its head trying to figure out what the hell happened. Now RMWC returns to Star Wars to examine the Prequel Trilogy.

I hope you appreciate this.

Plot
So two super-powered warrior/monk/diplomats visit some alien businessmen who are blockading an entire planet over some sort of trade treaty hissy fit. The aliens don’t like the fact that there are Jedi on their ship, react violently and the Jedi are forced to fight their way down to the planet so they can warn the locals that the ships above are sending down an invasion force. That’s the first ten minutes, and you know what? Its great. Sure, the hook of a “trade negotiation” isn’t really interesting, but then it reveals that there’s more going on than that and we get action and pretty quick pacing. Sadly, around the ten minute mark, the heroes accidentally rescue a character who is nothing but dead weight, travel to his undersea alien city, travel through the…aquatic center of the planet in a submarine?? Okay… Arrive at the planet’s capital, rescue the beleaguered leader and run the blockade so they can tell the universe about the shady dealings going on. The dead weight character really is the point where the movie starts falling down, but the pacing is still fairly good (except for the sub scenes).

Their ship gets damaged running the blockade so they have to touch down on a backwater desert world for repairs. One of the heroes, along with the dead weight and the obviously disguised female leader of Naboo travel into town and meet a kid who’s got crazy Jedi abilities who also happens to be the slave of a junk dealer with the only part in town that can fix their space ship. A lot of words are thrown around and ultimately its decided that the kid’s going to pilot his custom built pod racer in an all or nothing race. He wins: he goes free and the ship gets repaired. He loses: it sucks to be the protagonists. It doesn’t sound like a whole lot happens here, and it doesn't, but it takes up a lot of time.

Anyway, the kid wins (obviously) and the Jedi have a brief encounter with a Sith (their evil opposites) that they kind of freak out about since the Sith are supposed to be long gone. They get to Corsuscant, the capital of the Galactic Republic and here’s what follows: “Words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words.” A chancellor gets ousted from office and the Jedi Council decide that the boy, while powerful, is too dangerous to train and refuse to enroll him (which implies the alternative of an incredibly powerful Force prodigy running around the galaxy without ANY kind of training or discipline whatsoever until he gets taken under the wing of the Sith that the Jedi now know are out there, gets himself killed, or blows up a planet, or some combination thereof. You know…the Jedi are stupid). Oh yeah, and the dead weight character mentions in passing that his people have a grand army, which prompts the Queen of Naboo to return to her planet to take it back. That’s all that happens on Coruscant, and it takes over twenty minutes!

Ugh, moving on. They get back to the planet, meet up with the Gungan Army, plan their assault and go to it, which, is actually kind of fun. I mean, at least its got wars going on in Star Wars at that point. There’s a ground battle, a skirmish/city fight as the Queen tries to retake her city, the Jedi square off against the Sith in a final duel and there’s a space battle. They win (obviously) and this unevenly paced almost-ADVENTURE! film finally ends at the 133 minute mark.

Characters
Qui-Gon Jinn: Veteran actor Liam Neeson does a very good job of trying to make all of the scenes he’s in interesting, even the “words words words” ones. He’s a veteran Jedi who’s been around, has tremendous street smarts and is incredibly capable. He’s also constantly in the dog house with the Jedi Council for questioning their decisions (and, as their stupidity is already established, I can’t blame him). For the first half of the film I’d say he’s easily the badass as he talks back to the Queen and politely but consistently insults Jar Jar, but then he finds Anakin and becomes single-mindedly obsessed with him being the Chosen One. Sigh.

Obi-Wan Kenobi: Ewan MacGregor is Qui-Gon’s apprentice (padawan) and really does his best to be the understanding, supportive but by-the-book apprentice to Qui-Gon’s renegade. He’s really pretty good, but doesn’t get a whole lot to do in the movie aside from fight scenes.

Queen Padme Amidala: Natalie Portman plays the newly-elected Queen of Naboo, which isn’t how queens work. Maybe Naboo works under an Elector Count System like the Holy Roman Empire did, which, while not an efficient government system, has some precedent, even though its for Emperors/Empresses not Kings/Queens. Dammit, I can’t even throw the movie a bone without stretching too far. Okay, so the Queen is a fairly wooden character with a wardrobe bigger than Barbie’s entire backlog and a mess of “handmaidens,” young girls of around her age (including Keira Knightley) that hover in her background and wear identical hooded robes that can serve as decoys when need be. That…doesn’t sound like a royal entourage, that sounds like it belongs in Thulsa Doom’s snake cult. Also, why would a planet that is so fanatically committed to pacifistic ideals that they don’t even have a standing army and the Queen’s own personal starship is completely unarmed, use young women in the same way that Castro used doubles?? That’s barbaric! This kind of dissonance reflects on the character of the Queen herself, who’s all about protecting her people’s lives, but she also escapes into space, leaving her occupied planet behind in the hands of a bunch of aliens who promise to oppress the people if she won’t sign a treaty. Why didn’t she just sign the goddamn treaty and take it up with the courts as an illegally extorted document instead of being all selfish and “I need to tell the Senate personally that my people are being oppressed instead of actually making selfless decisions for their greater good.” She’s a shitty queen. As for Portman’s performance, I thought it was wooden, uninspired and unsympathetic, all bad traits for a main character, but then again, look at the material she had to work with.

Jar Jar Binks: A vein is throbbing in my head at the though of having to write about him, but I shall persevere. Ahmed Best did the voice and motion capture for the all-CGI gungan outcast. Qui-Gon rescues him by chance and for the rest of the movie Jar Jar just won’t shut the hell up. The root of the rage is in the way he talks. Obviously it got a lot of flack for being “ethnically offensive” and I won’t beat that dead horse (not when there are other related horses that deserve sound thrashings). For an example of his speech “Yoosa should follow me now, okeeday?” He’s like that FOR THE ENTIRE MOVIE. I’ve heard excuses saying that he’s innocent like a child and as smart, but no. That’s no excuse because the character is too dumb to live and wouldn’t if not for the fact that he’s surrounded by competent characters. The CGI effects for the character have also started to age too. He’s also completely useless to the plot. Sure, they make it seem like he’s the one that brings the Naboo and the Gungans together against the Droid Army, but really, the line about how “the Naboo don’t like the Gungans very much is because of their military inclination” could have been explained early on, or told by another character in the Naboo government: Information like that should be common knowledge for the leaders of said planet. Jar Jar is Dead Fucking Weight.

Anakin Skywalker: Jake Lloyd’s generally bad performance is common knowledge, so we won’t beleaguer that point. Little Anakin is blessed with all sorts of “plot-hax.” He’s a mechanic that builds a robot and a pod racer in his spare time, knows all sorts of local lore despite being a slave, its implied that he was conceived by the “midi-chlorians” which is a bullshit way of dancing around immaculate conception (made worse because after this movie they quietly brush that aside in the next movies. Yes I hate those two concepts, but Lucas went so far as to include them in his movie as important plot points and its lazy storytelling to completely ignore it rather than come up with some way to make it work in the context of the greater story), and his Force levels are OVER 9000!!!!! Clearly, he must be the Chosen One!

But wait. Is he really a great mechanic? During the pod race, his ride gets sabotaged by having a part broken off, but that only explains one of the breakdowns. His racer almost doesn’t even start at the beginning of the race, costing him time and one of the connecting cables to an engine flies loose during the second lap. Neither of these look like they’re related to the sabotage, so the only explanation for that is slipshod mechanical skills that aren’t as good as he says they are. Then there’s the whole feelings of self-importance he has. Sure, kids are disobedient, but he’s consistently so and, oddly for a slave, goes un-reprimanded for the most part. When he confronts Qui-Gon about his Jedi status, Qui-Gon playfully tries to hide it and Anakin gets incredibly defensive about the possibility that maybe he’s wrong about something, which is fantastic villain building actually because it makes him a budding egomaniac, but I don’t think its intentional. He also gets some flashes of crazy. Padme, from her sheltered, aristocratic life, innocently enough asks if he’s a slave. He snaps back with “I’m a person and my name is Anakin,” which I guess is normal, but he gets a look in his eyes like he’s going leap at her with a wrench and a feral howl if she so much as mentions it again, which is not a normal reaction to give to a character that you’ve just hit on moments before. Which is actually pretty fun villain foreshadowing, but again, the way the character is being sold to the audience is as a heroic, kind, honest boy when that’s clearly not the kid we’re actually seeing. Also, his “big damn heroes” moment where he blows up the enemy flagship is so damn contrived that it hurts. The damn fighter’s on autopilot most of the fight and its through blind luck and plot armor that he is able to hit the critical juncture. Force powers my ass.

Captain Panaka: Hugh Quarshire plays the stoic, loyal captain of the Queen’s bodyguards. He’d probably be an interesting character if they’d actually given him anything to do other than look concerned.

R2-D2: So Artoo it turns out was a maintenance droid on the Queen’s starship. Artoo is Artoo, and thank god they didn’t derail the character. Still, connecting him to the main action of this movie doesn’t serve any purpose whatsoever for the original trilogy and only serves to make the Star Wars universe a much, much smaller place where everybody knows everybody somehow. This is going to be a recurring theme.

C-3PO: First, the puppet is really nice and Anthony Daniels returns as the voice of the fussy droid. That’s the good part. The bad is that Anakin builds a protocol droid skilled in complicated diplomatic procedures for his penniless slave of a mother. Second is that he serves no purpose whatsoever to the plot. Third is that a character crucial to the original trilogy and a unique character just happens to be built by Anakin Skywalker just so you can have the “first meeting” between him and Artoo makes the universe smaller.

Supreme Chancellor Valorum: Terence Stamp (Zod from Superman II) has a really small role as the head of the Republic and an established ally of Naboo and the Queen. His loyalty and friendship are rewarded with Amidala triggering a vote of no confidence in him. That’s awfully considerate of her.

Watto: Andrew Secombe voices the Toydarian junk dealer who owns Anakin. The CGI on the character is well done and the guy’s an interesting character in a sleazy, backwater way.

Senator Palpatine/Darth Sidious: Ian McDiarmid returns to the franchise as the man who will be Emperor. He’s really good as a Senator from Naboo who is constantly working angles against other characters for his own ends. He’s also obviously the Sith Lord who’s the man behind the scenes, but the movie plays the duality straight, never outright showing it. As a manipulator and magnificent bastard, he’s pretty great for his screen time.

Yoda: Frank Oz returns as the ancient Jedi master. There’s a new puppet to reflect the younger Yoda, and it works great. That, combined with Oz’s voice work, keeps the character a welcome sight, despite giving him some pretty cheesy lines and being part of the idiot ball carrying Jedi Council.

Mace Windu: Samuel L. Jackson is the other member of the Jedi Council that gets major screen time and lines. He and Yoda mostly just echo each other’s thoughts.

Boss Nass: BRIAN BLESSED lends his booming voice to the CGI leader of the Gungans. It was he who banished Jar Jar from their city (good so far) and after making peace with the Naboo, he makes Jar Jar a general, throwing the coward into harm’s way (likely in the hopes that it’ll get the guy killed in action, or perhaps fragged by his own men. Oh, if only). For that, I salute him.

Sebulba: Lewis Macleod lends the voice of the CGI pod racer with a bad attitude and a bizarre physiology. He’s played up as the local racing hotshot and asshole who cheats to win. He’s Anakin’s racing rival, but he also beats up Jar Jar, so he’s a pretty cool guy.

Darth Maul: Talented martial artist Ray Park is the demonic-looking Sith Apprentice. Sure, he’s a little bit gimmicky with his dual bladed lightsaber, but he’s there to bring the pain, and he does. Unfortunately, he’s given no development whatsoever, few lines, and is dispatched in a punk-ass way. His bitch death is what’s holding him back from being the movie’s Badass. If he’d been better handled as a credible threat, it would’ve worked.

The Niemoidians: The Trade Federation honchos. They dress in odd clothes, have ridiculous accents, but are animatronic heads on top of actors, and that’s kind of cool. They are cowardly and more than a bit silly, so they’re not a credible threat as legitimate villains, but as manipulated minion fodder for Sidious, they get the job done. They’re not even really villains. The worst thing they do is invade Naboo and threaten pain upon the Queen and the people. Throughout the movie we’re repeatedly told that people are dying on the planet, but we never ever see anything to support that, which is bad storytelling. The Trade Federation just wants their stupid little trade agreement signed, probably for a monopoly or something. The invasion is meant to bring the hostile party to the bargaining table (and it fails). Sure they threaten violence upon the people, but in all honesty, in what way would systematically executing potential customers be a good business strategy?? Lackeys? Sure. Major, murderous villains? No.

The Battle Droids: The mechanical soldiers of the Trade Federation. I actually really liked these guys. Sure, they’re no stormtroopers, but as far as low level minions, they get the job done. Hell, they’re even pretty sympathetic when it comes down to how outclassed they are against the Jedi. You can’t help but feel sorry for the guys as they get violently dismembered on screen. And during the final battle, they also manage to secure a legitimate victory against the “vaunted” Gungan Army. Seriously, they overwhelm the amphibians and start rounding up captives with the intent to get shit done, and its only the plot railroading of Anakin’s piloting “skills” that snatches victory away from the hapless droids. I’m going to go with these thankless workhorses as the movie’s badasses. Roger, roger, you selfless metal men. Roger, roger.

Visuals/Effects
Eye candy. That’s what George Lucas has done as the director. The pacing of the film might be awful, but at least the boring parts are pretty to look at. The movie features a mix of live action, physical effects and puppets and CGI, and on that technical level, it works great. The cinematography is absolutely gorgeous in the film, with shots framed beautifully and progressing mood or story. It would make for a great graphic novel that way. Action scenes are usually really solid, but I have to talk about the end battle.

The end battle is divided into four concurrent storylines, which could be a problem, but the way its edited, its actually pretty coherent. Unfortunately, not all of the segments get proper development time. The land battle between the Gungans and the Droid Army is bright, flashy and pretty inventive (even with the Jar Jar stuff), the problem is that it feels like a cutscene from a game and not a climactic moment. The city fight with Amidala’s men is pretty well done too, but there’s not a lot of it and it doesn’t really feel dangerous either because the only casualties are droids and nameless stuntmen. The three-way fight between Darth Maul and the Jedi is absolutely fantastic and everything you could ever want in a fast-paced lightsaber duel to the death. It’s the highlight of the movie, easily. The space battle. Star Wars was known for its incredible space battles, but what the hell happened here? Let’s explore. First, Anakin “Lucky Shot” Skywalker is not a legitimately plausible fighter pilot. Second, it has no flow, no choreography whatsoever. Its just fighters flying up to space where the battle plan is to “blow up the control ship” (sounds like they got handed a suicide mission by their wise and benevolent leaders). Third, it has no tension whatsoever. A total of four other pilots get any kind of face time and only one of them has received any kind of development whatsoever because he was on the Royal Starship during their jaunt through the backwater planets. Out of those four, only one gets a fiery death in cold space. An epic battle with emotional investment in their success this ain’t.

Writing
George Lucas probably should have had help tightening up the script. The dialog is stiff, stiffer than the original trilogy, and the pacing is, as already mentioned, awful. The ideas are pretty neat though, and the plot isn’t bad if you boil it down to its bare minimum structure without the ponderous overuse of “words words words” Its also abundantly clear that Lucas does not write political drama/thrillers very well because he fails to capture the nuance of the subtle game of diplomacy and instead the Senate scenes are just exposition vomited out onto the screen (with the exception of McDiarmid’s oily delivery).

Sound
John Williams on soundtrack and Ben Burtt on sound editing. It feels so good to write that sentence again. They again do glorious and fantastic work.

Conclusion
It was twenty-some years between the first movie and Phantom Menace. The technology has progressed in making Star Wars but the storytelling has degraded. The end result is a long, ponderous but lushly-shot film that makes great use of special effects, but is dragged down by its delivery. Some good performances are countered by really bad performances, and of course, there’s Jar Jar Binks to assault the audience. Visually it and its effects pushed filmmaking tech forward, but the movie as a whole lacks the energy and fire that made the original trilogy so damn infectious. This movie is a yo-yo of quality. When it actually clicks, its pure Star Wars magic. Sadly, it doesn’t click as often as it misfires. If you love Star Wars, of course you’ve already seen it and more than likely been disappointed (or at best found it “okay”). If you love awesome movies with heart and soul, this film will not satisfy you.