Um... Wow

So, I went to the midnight screening of the final Star Wars movie, last night... I had some really high hopes. I liked Episodes I & II... not loved... but liked, anyway... and I was so hoping that this movie would make up for all the "shortcomings" of the first two... and it made up for it, and then some.

It really was an incredibly well-done film. The opening battle was the best looking of any battle in any of the six movies. After the "crawl," you see a lone big-assed battleship thing... as it moves out of the way, a HUGE battle is taking place beneath it... I had a feeling I was gonna be happy with the film... well, "happy" is an operative word, here. The movie was actually incredibly tragic from start to finish... When it's clear that Anakin Skywalker has fallen victim to the Dark Side, it was very depressing... As he ignites his light saber to slaughter the Younglings, it was actually quite sad what had become of "the chosen one." The script managed to trim down a vast majority of the silly one-liners that intruded in on the earlier two movies... thank god.

One-liners aside, though, the script? Well, it was still pretty bad (like the other two prequels). There are three moments in the film where I laughed out loud at how cheesy what I was hearing was... one of those moments actually being the lone dialogue scene with the '70s-era Darth Vader. I really can't believe that people sat around watching the dailies for these scenes with the cheesy dialogue and said, "Yeah, that works..." There were a couple scenes with Obi-Wan that he probably needed to be... a little more animated... but he just kinda delivered his lines all cool and calm... maybe that's just how a Jedi is, or something (I know that, given the circumstances, I would have been extremely more "agitated" (to say the least) than Kenobi)... At the very end, Obi-Wan finally finds some passion for what's happening around him...

The action sequences do quite a bit to make up for the crappy dialogue. The light saber battles were incredibly good, all-around. So much (that we already knew) was tied up quite nicely... There was a moment, when the Rebel Blockade Runner (incidentally, piloted by the original Boba Fett, Jeremy Bulloch) appears onscreen (the first ship from any of the older trilogy to appear in the new movies)... and they move inside, to the very simple, very white interior and I was transported back in time, where I met Darth Vader for the very first time in 1977, three minutes into Episode IV. Considering how "technically beautiful" the latter three movies had become compared to their predecessors, to see that low-tech, plain white walkway, again... it was so cool. Everybody knew the story of how Darth Vader came to be. Finally seeing it on screen was amazing... amazingly depressing. I watched so many people walk out of the theater completely stunned at what they saw. So tragic... and so awesome.
My only complaint is the fact that the movie theater apparently lost the air-conditioning before the movie, making it extremely warm for myself and 159 other people... considering the volcanic terrain of the final battle between Skywalker and Obi-Wan, it was probably only fitting that we all feel the heat a little, as well...

It was great... finally. I am sad to see it over... or is it? Word has it there is a TV show in the works... which could be cool, or could really blow. If "Revenge of the Sith" is where the Star Wars legacy ends, it ended on a tremendous high-note of complete tragedy...