Friday, May 20, 2005

Star Wars Episode III : Revenge of the Sith. Truly Fun-tastic.

MOVIE RATING: 4.5 / 5
Revenge of the Sith released here in India on 20th May, being a World Wide Premier, with a runtime of 148 minutes. The first day crowd was, as expected, a real crowd. The theater was packed even at the 2:10 pm show, with the heat at its peak. And the enthusiasm of the audience could have been estimated quite well when a lot of cheering could be heard from all around the cinema at the start of the movie, when "LucasFilms" logo and the Opening Crawl appeared.
The Movie opened with the war between the Galactic Republic and the Confederacy of Independent Systems, and sleek Star Fighters zoomed across the space blasting enemy ships and getting blasted themselves. Anakin Skywalker (played by Hayden Christensen) and Obi-Wan Kenobi (played by Ewan McGregor), the 2 Jedis, fought with their Jedi Instincts and blasted off star ships with intelligent tactics. George Lucas has inserted some funny encounters between R2-D2 and enemy droids / robots. One particularly funny scene was when Skywalker and Kenobi fly inside the Trade Federation Cruiser The Invisible Hand. R2-D2 is left behind with the ships and the 2 Jedis set off to find Chancellor Palpatine inside the Cruiser. Now, back with R2-D2, 2 Enemy Droids arrive to check, and R2-D2 tries to hide itself somewhere, while Kenobi tries to talk to it with some sort of a hand-held walkie talkie to activate the elevators. So, it was quite a funny scene, with the 2 Droids lurking around, R2-D2 trying to stuff itself somewhere safe and Obi-Wan's voice echoing in the whole area, asking R2 to activate the elevators. And when the 2 enemy droids managed to capture R2, it squirted out (what looked like black grease) onto the 2 droids and then alighted them, so that the 2 droids blasted off merrily. There were many other amusing encounters between R2 and enemy droids inside the ship, watch out for them.


The Epic War in Process

The Lightsaber action was, as usual, breath-taking. Anakin and Obi-Wan easily tackled 10 droids (each) at once with their lightsabers. And the 3 Person encounter Anakin-Dooku-Kenobi (which soon became a 2 person encounter between Skywalker and Count Dooku) was very well reproduced, with Skywalker killing the mighty Count Dooku at the end. The whole war sequence is very richly made and carefully produced.


Lot of Lightsaber Action in store.

At a particular time in the movie when the Republic Soldiers had turned against the Jedis, and started killing them, it was quite sad. Because one instance the soldiers were walking with one Jedi to find the enemy and next instance they all started firing towards the particular Jedi they were accompanying. Two soldiers who were with Master Yoda (who can be considered as the wisest and the strongest Jedi), when they tried to kill him from his back, Yoda sprung up and killed them both with his Lightsaber, so that was quite cool and that showed why he was considered as the greatest Jedi. The role of Master Yoda in this movie was very powerful and impressive (as it had been in the last 5 Star Wars Movies). His fight with The Dark Lord was fast and sleek.
The transformation of Anakin Skywalker into the great Darth Vader is potrayed perfectly. Though the role of Darth Vader in this movie is in the last 5 minutes of the movie, still it was quite impressive. The ultimate fight between Skywalker and Kenobi was cool, and definitely is one of the greatest things about EP3 Movie.


Anakin turning to the Dark Side.

95% of this movie is full of hard-paced action which will keep you glued to your seats, as it did to me. And it will be a treat for every Star Wars Fan, as it was for me.

May the Force be with you.