Revenge of the Sith, Star Wars Episode III
Note: This blog post is going to evolve over the course of the day due to limited time with work to update it as I process my thoughts and find links to support my writings.
So last night my wife and I along with about 15 others saw Episode III on the only digital projector showing in all of Idaho. I have posted from photos taken with my Sidekick2 to a Flickr set. I have no intention of giving a rundown of the movie, but I will say that it's awesome compared to the other prequels and delivers high in action. It makes a lot of ties to the original trilogy and leads in to them well.
I do want to talk specifics in two areas: 1) Digital Projectors in movie theaters, and 2) George Lucas and his appreciation for dismemberment.
The owner of the theater chain gave a big speech before the movie about his brand new $150,000 projector that was just installed this week by folks from Lucasfilm. He said that there are only 70 digital projectors in the US. Only 22 are of this new state of the art projector line (offering 4 times the resolution of previous models). Only 3 theaters in the US have more than 1 digital projector, we were in 1 of them (they have one top of the line, and one below that). The resolution is something like 2000 width x 1000 height (?2 Mega pixel?). He also boosted that the screen we were in was 1 of only 11 with the Dolby Digital sound system (but as I understand the system is a notch below THX - I couldn't tell, it was great sounding).
Warning: If this post has ROTS spoilers at all it is in this paragraph, please don't read on if you have problems with that. In watching the original Trilogy there is a connection made between Darth Vader and Luke with that they both have had their hands cut off - It implies that they were on the same course in life if you may. I don't think that the trend of having limbs cut off is predominant in the rest of the Star Wars movies (as far as my recollection serves), it happen - Anakin loses arm in Attack of the Clones, Obi-Wan cuts off the arm of the guy threatening Luke in the Mos Eisley Cantina, etc., but in Revenge of the Sith there is definitely a high concentration of hands/limbs being severed.
Here are the numbers for characters and their severed limbs (hands count) that I come up with for the entire series: Anakin Skywalker / Darth Vader x 4, Count Dooku x 2 (+1 more if you count his beheading), General Grievous x 2, Luke Skywalker x 1, and Mace Windu x 1. If you have other examples please post in the comments - try and stick with only main characters and only with the movies (I don't venture into the expanded universe).
One last complaint: Yoda should be a puppet. The CG Yoda is so phony, nothing like the endearing little Jedi Master we once saw in his little hut with Luke on that weird swamp planet.
That said, I like this film much more than the last two. That may not be saying much since the last two absolutely reeked. I went in to this movie with low expectations and came out quite surprised and pleased.
My favorite part ***ROTK SPOILER ALERT***is when Anakin enters the Jedi Temple to eradicate the Jedi. Brutal. Just harsh. Also, all the fight scenes are really well done. Not too busy or overdone.
The acting was wooden (esp. Sam Jackson's Mace Windo), but better than the last two films. Hayden does a decent job as a brooding Anakin and Ewan does great as Kenobi. Palpatine steals the show with his insidious lulling of Anakin to the dark side.