Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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43 of 55 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Hit and miss but ultimately essential viewing!!, 14 Oct 2008
Would I buy this box set on the strength of the films alone? I would say yes, but in the first two episodes George Lucas has bought everything to the screen except real characters that you want to follow. Seeing as this is a story of one, maybe two pivotal characters then that really is its undoing. The first two films are a mixed bag of spectacular effects full of cannon fodder robots, dull moments and awful voice overs. The third, is simply excellent, Revenge of the Sith recaptures the spirit of the original trilogy and gives it depth and tragedy, it really pulls all the parts together to give you a satisfying, yet expected conclusion.
The Phantom Menace :- Skip to the Pod Race and the final light sabre battle and you basically have the best of a mixed bag. With the introduction of Jar Jar Binks you find yourself shouting No No No at the screen. What was George thinking. A fully realised CGI maybe? But to approve an embarrasing cartoon vocal is unforgivable. The underwater city is uninvolving and the land battle is an unconvincing CGI mish mash. Don't get me wrong there are moments of beauty in the film, such as a short battle with Darth Maul before the Naboo Royal Starship takes off against a grim Tatooine backdrop and another with Darth Maul scouring the Tatooine desert through hi-tech binoculars before descending into the town on his Sith speeder. Also the final battle with Darth Mau...l. You get the message, the Darth Maul sequences really make this film. The Anakin storyline is weak and 'forced'...no pun intended. 7/10
Attack of Clones :- The pace of the trilogy is notched up a level and everything just got a lot bigger, technology-wise. But with the introduction of dialogue spouting from a grown up Anakin we are left squirming all over again. Poor script or poor delivery. I think both. The same for Obi Wan, basically he sounds posh and it just doesn't work for me as he delivers the same tone regardless of any danger he finds himself in.
The opening car chase sequence is too loose, there is no real sense of peril and is just an excuse to deliver a fully realised CGI world, which it does succeed, but at the expense of everything else.
On the plus side the Bounty Hunter, Jango Fett vs Obi Wan fight sequence set against the Slave I spacecraft and torrid weather conditions are great.
The assembly of the Jedi fighting as one also excites but is under used.
The effects are fantastic compared to anything else of this genre but are over used and generate no real scale. Basically we are taken into a war which has no storyline. How fantastic if they could of combined the 'Full Metal Jacket' approach of travelling on foot through a broken landscape with the high tech world of Star Wars encapsulating. So much more personal and meaningful.
Everything is bigger and to some degree better. But I can't help feeling it is only setting up the final conflict. I know thats obvious but a more enjoyable journey getting there would of been appreciated. This not a film you will return to unless watching the trilogy in its entirety. 7/10
Revenge of the Sith :- A simply stunning, dramatic and rewarding yet dark conclusion. This episode opens magnificently with Obi Wan and Anakin fighting through a full scale space epic encounter to rescue Chancellor Palpatine from the grip of General Grevious, who is one of the series best characters, multi-limbed and represents a true threat.
For me, the Emperor steals the show and his delivery is devious yet menacing, preying on Anakin's frailties which are the backbone to this story.
The transition from Anakin to Darth Vader is mesmerising, in the end you feel Anakin's pain.
From the Wookie battles, again not a scene much more a fly-by, to the lava ladened Mustafar light sabre battle on the Outer Rim this movie becomes a visceral experience but is backed up with depth and real emotion.
As the movie ends and all the loose ends tie up you cannot help to feel caught up in what is 'just' a sci-fi movie. But it has been a long journey and it is still the original trilogy that gives this final episode its poignancy. 10/10
This final film is what the Star Wars franchise deserves and maybe you should just buy it stand alone. But that would simply be an injustice.
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19 of 27 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
The result of too much time, too much money, too many 'yes men', 27 Dec 2008
For me, what these films show is that although George Lucas is an imaginative 'ideas man', left to his own devices he ultimately doesn't cut the mustard as a writer or a director. None of the actors in these films are slouches, but if you did not know so already, you'd be hard pressed to know it on this evidence and that can only be the fault of the director!
You don't have to look too hard at the original films to see reasons for their clear superiority,
Star Wars - No budget, massive pressure and challenges from the Studio, pressure on set as director finds difficulty in communicating ideas to cast and crew. George creates something he's ultimately not happy with in what he quotes as one of the most traumatic an unhappy experiences of his life and yet the film itself turns out to great!
Empire Strikes Back - Best film of the entire saga is a result of George handing over direction and control to someone else. Natch!
Return of the Jedi - Underated episode of the original trilogy. Someone else directs again to great effect (for a PROPER example of the Emperor using subversive tactics to tempt a Jedi to the 'Dark Side' look no further), with the only real weak point being the much maligned inclusion of the accursed Ewoks, which was actually on insistance by George as Producer, when it was originally going to be the Wookies on THEIR home world (the first example of the negative impact of a George with too much power and belief in his own greatness. He did the same in Indy 4. Surprise surprise, the aleins idea was George's and he would not greenlight any other script!).
So what of this prequel trilogy?
Phantom Menace - Okay if you have not watched any of the originals too recently as it did not and does not stand up to the hype. Age gap between Anakin and Padme is too great, home planet being Tatooine is just rediculous and the end is basically an inferior replay of Return of the Jedi with the Gungans replacing the Ewoks.
Attack of the Clones - asside from the utterly rubbish title, this appeared on release to be superior to Phantom Menace due to there being much more action and it being more visually entertaining, but the writing/script make it almost unwatchable for large chunks of the movie, bringing it back down to Phantom's level. The entire Padme Anakin thing is completely unbelievable, regardless of the age thing and as for the scene just before they enter the arena, words just fail me.
Revenge of the Sith. The best of the 3, but still not 'up there' with the originals. The second half of the movie (post Anakin's turning) is better than the first (asside from the Nooooo! incident), principally because the lead up to and the 'turning' itself are utterly preposterous! Anakin actually get's more grounded in what is right as a Jedi as the film goes on! When it comes to the actual 'turning sequence itself' he's actually in the right as far as what he is calling for to happen, it is Mace Windu who is the one justifying murder. In the end he only dissarms Windu (literally), it is the emperor who kills him and then afterwards he pledges his allegiance to the ultimate antithesis of what he and the Jedi stand for? Please....
Looking at the arc of the story over the entire 3 films it's amazing that the same single writer can allow himself (or indeed BE allowed) to be the creator of so many of his own problems! With an entire universe to choose from he seems almost determined to right himself into a corner by creating multiple connections between characters and places from both trilogies that just don't need to be there and just create greater inplausability,
C3PO created by the boy whow would become Vader, R2 Being HIS droid? Okay so 3PO's memory was wiped, but what about Vader's? Funny how, even though they bump into eachother in the original trilogy Vader does not seem to be any the wiser. Not to mention the fact that R2's memory is not wiped at all, so how come he never brings it up?
Hiding the son and the arch enemy on Vader's home planet? How on earth would that EVER be a good or even plausable idea?
I could go on, but I won't.
For these to have been the films that they could and should have been, what needed to happen was for George to write the broad plot, for someone else to then flesh it out with details and a decent script and for someone other than George to direct it.
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4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
These films will be coming out on Blu-ray next year!!!, 27 May 2009
I am a huge Star Wars/Si-Fi fan and I really enjoyed the prequel trilogy. I thought Darth Maul was under used and I know not many people did but, I liked Jar Jar Blinks because he was funny. The Pod race was excellent and Yoda was great fun to watch with his mad lightsaber fighting. The great Christopher Lee was in these films and The Lord Of The Rings trilogy what a lucky man. The epic battle with Anakin Skywalker and Obi-Wan is fantastic too. There are so many brilliant moments in this trilogy and to be fair it would have been impossible for anyone to top the first trilogy.
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