drewan | Obligatory Star Wars post

At about 4:30pm yesterday afternoon Joe IM'ed me to see if I might want to go see Star Wars at midnight. He'd just read a local friend's LJ post about possibly having extra tickets. Sadly, those tickets were gone by the time we read the comments to the post, but Joe was still in the mood to go. I pulled up one of the local theater's website, which displayed "Sold Out," but I decided to call them anyways. After going through a long series of prompts, I was finally able to purchase two tickets on the seventh option for the movie.

Since we were going to be up very late, I asked Joe to cancel the Window installers meeting, because I wanted to try and get in a nap before the movie. After watching the 90 minute Smallville episode (Fortress of Solitude???) I was able to get an hour long nap before heading over to Southdale.

Just as we walked in and started to get in line, we ran into romeoa. He was surprised to see us since I'd told him we were going to wait until Saturday. He was happy to see us though. Then we spotted michaellee, who was kind enough to hold some extra seats for us. We didn't have to wait in line very long. The theater started letting everyone in at about 10:30pm. Instead of making us go to the theater on our ticket, they said we could just go to which ever theater we'd like. I was expecting to be stuck in one of the small screens, but we were able to get into one of the nice big screens, thanks again to michaellee.

I brought Good Omens with me to read, since I was expecting a long wait in line. I was able to read a couple pages while we sat, but we spent most of the time chatting with those around us. mattmn came in a little later, so we chatted about Doctor Who for a bit.

As for the movie itself

Maybe I was a little tired, but that whole opening sequence was almost too fast paced for me. There was just too much to see on screen at one time. I'm glad that we had been sure to watch the Clone Wars episodes on Cartoon Network, which nicely filled in the story the lead right into the start of this movie.

I've seen several reviews criticizing Natalie Portman's and Hayden Christensen's acting. I've just come to assume that they are reserved and slightly aloof people, not prone to great expression.

I am no fan of tragedies. Watching Anakin's increasingly rapid decline into the dark side, I kept mentally encouraging him to make a different choice. When he FINALLY realized Palpatine is the Sith Lord, we had a brief glimmer of hope he might do the right thing. Of course we know he wouldn't... I don't think Lucas wants to deal with the continuity issues. This isn't Star Trek.

Palpatine really was a brilliant villain. He had everyone worked around his little shriveled fingers. As he dueled Mace Windu, and *appeared* to suffer and shrivel from the battle (I think he was really just letting down the illusion of health that he has fooled everyone with for so long), he was just playing with Windu in order to regain Anakin's sympathy.

Of course, as Windu's body is repelled from the Chancellor's office window, my first thought was that he could survive that. Hey... he just had his arm cut off, got electrocuted by Sith power bolts, and blown from a mile high window. That's nothing for a Jedi Master, right? We didn't see a body!

As order 66 was being executed, I really felt sad watching all of the treachery and death. I was hoping to at least see a few more survive, more than just Yoda. Lets see a few go into hiding. The whole scene in the Jedi communications center with Kenobi and Yoda seem to imply that their must be more out there.

Speaking of Yoda, that bit with him climbing Chewbacca was pretty cool. A Jedi Master has no pride.

Couldn't they have killed Jar Jar Binks? This is really all his fault anyways, isn't it. He's the simpleton tool who was used to bring Palpatine into full power. He really shouldn't have lived.

Wiping C-3PO's memory was priceless. I'd thought they would have also wiped R2-D2's memory, though.

It was nice to see a brief bit of Alderaan from the surface. To bad they only had another 20 years or so until it's on the wrong side of the Death Star.

How long does it take to build a Death Star? The first one appeared to have already begun construction at the end of this movie, but wasn't finished for roughly twenty years. The second Death Star, as seen in Return of the Jedi, was full operational within a couple years of the first one being destroyed. I guess they could have already been building it during the first movie...

I'm feeling the urge to read more of the post-Return of the Jedi, Star Wars Extended Universe books. I read the first several that came out in the mid-90's, but I didn't keep up with it. I'm curious to see how the books change now that the movie series is completed. I'd like to know how the new Jedi order formed by Luke handles the old Jedi temple on Coruscant. Of course, Palpatine probably had it bull dozed.