$1.959

Tonight, we saw Revenge of the Sith, and I have to say that I was impressed.

I was impressed greatly by the special effects. With every film in the franchise, Lucas’ teams have gotten better and better at making the unreal real, and Sith shows off the best special effects I’ve seen. Really good stuff, with an awful lot of things happening on the screen at any given time. Even details like battle sequences going on in the background of scenes were realistic and vivid.

I was also impressed by the attention to detail in tying this trilogy to the previous trilogy (or later trilogy, depending on whether you’re counting by release date like us old guys, or by story line like the younglings do). Simple things, like Obi Wan picking up Anikin’s light saber after having de-limbed him — he’d need to give that to Luke in A New Hope. There were numerous things in the film that laid a strong foundation for the future trilogy from the past.

Is this film dark? Absolutely. Little Ani becomes a slayer first class by the time the film is over. There’s no gore, although there are heads separated from bodies, much like the last film and others in the series. The thing that kinda stuck with me was how agitatedly vicious the attacks were. Some of the scenes were just mindless hacking, although from a storyline perspective, it made sense. And yes, there was the implication that Little Ani slaughtered a room of children. However, Return of the Jedi was similarly dark, especially with Luke and Vader hacking at each other, so I don’t think that’s anything new. I do believe, though, that this one probably earned its PG-13 rating.

Despire all that, Sio went with us, enjoyed the film and wasn’t traumatized by it. Like she said, things as bad as this are seen on the news. She’s right, of course.

What’s funny to me is the mania over seeing this one. Theatres all over town were showing it at 12:01 this morning. People were lined up for days to get in. Many, many folks were costumed. And despite all that, it still didn’t have the same manic sense as when Star Wars was first released. We’ve gotten a little numb to the dazzling special effects and don’t necessarily go in expecting the greatest film we’ve ever seen. I can remember reading about the first one in Starlog magazine, and the huge news was that there would be a better than 10-minute space-based fight scene. No one had ever tried anything like that before, and the pre-production images in the magazine were astounding. Then the film came, and you simply couldn’t watch it and not come out transformed — you knew you had just seen something special, amazing, groundbreaking, and your whole basis for comparing special effects-based films had been shattered.

Now, it’s old hat. We go in, we’re entertained, surprised by the plot ocassionally, and then we jump in our SUVs, and head home. Nothing wrong with that, but I’m ready for the next Big Impact on the big screen. We’re about due, I think!