Episode III: Revenge of the Quality

High School reunion day continues -- I just got back from seeing Star Wars with the aforementioned red-headed lady named Court. As a (wannabe) geek, I feel compelled to comment on the flick.

Like just about everyone else who's seen it, I loved it. It was hardcore dark and spooky. And, when Natalie Portman and Hayden Christensen weren't trying to make lines like "You look beautiful because I'm so in love" sound like Shakespeare, the dialogue was pretty decent. The lead-in into Episode IV was cool, the whole Anakin-turning-into-Vader thing was well done, oh, and the lightsaber fights were awesome.

So all this raises the question: If Lucas can actually make a good film, why the fuck didn't he for the first two episodes? My brother told me his theory -- that he deliberately made the first two shitty to make this one seem better. Which, I guess, makes sense, in a devious kind of way. I think Lucas knew ep. 3 was gonna be dark and spooky and wanted 1 & 2 to be all light and happy, aka, shitty, so 3 would seem all that much darker. You'd think he would've learned from Empire that a little bit of darkness goes a long way towards making his movies better. Oh well.