I’ve just read Michael’s review of Episode III. An excellent read, and I agree for the most part, except that for me even seeing Anakin rendered limbless [and on fire] didn’t quite make up for the rest of it.

Rather than write my own [mostly redundant] review, I will merely try to epitomise what I thought was most wrong with this film by… uh… borrowing the two stills Michael used.

After the opening crawl had vanished into the stars, this is what I wanted to see:

A freakin’ huge spaceship, plowing through space in the relentlessly straight line dictated by the rules of inertia. It’s so imposing, so dominating; it looms into view and the sheer presence of it almost induces vertigo. This image is taken from the opening shot of Episode IV, filmed in 1977.

But in Episode III (2005), this is what exploded [vomited?] onto the screen:

The closest I got to vertigo here was a sense of vague nausea. There is so much color and chaotic motion that it all becomes meaningless. The various craft all seem to move according to utterly disparate physical laws; some move like planes, some like boats, some like fish– None move like spacecraft.¹

George Lucas needs the phrase “Less is more” tattooed onto the back of his eyelids.

NB: If you haven’t already, go read Michael’s review. ²

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1. See the recent Battlestar Galactica for some beautiful space flight stuff to see just how well it can be done. Note that I do understand that Star Wars has an established look-and-feel for space flight, but I don’t think it was adhered to either– Can you imagine two x-wings bumping against each other to brush away a few pesky wing-walking droids?

2. So I can feel less guilty about nicking his images.