Catfish at the late night cinema

Before:
For Halloween when I was in kindergarten, I was Yoda, complete with a dime-store plastic mask and felt feet my mom sewed, green, stuffed with foam and velcroed over my feet.
It was one of the man Star Wars costumes I constructed during my childhood. I was Luke on Hoth, Luke as an X-wing pilot and a storm trooper – I made rubber-band gun blasters of wood, painted black.
Return of the Jedi was my favorite because I lived in the woods – a perfect outdoor backdrop for Endor as I sent figures on crucial missions.
I read endlessly once George Lucas gave his blessing for other writers to fashion tales in his universe.
I caught late opening night shows for each of the rereleases in 1997, taking the latter-day changes and additions as nothing more than what I had to pay to catch them on the big screen.
All-in-all, I was nothing more than a mid-level dork – a Star Wars fan for all the right reasons. In an amazingly visual trio of films, the stories always took richer tones in my imagination. I filled in and refilled in all the cracks in the narrative with my own creations. I imagined all the other Rebel outposts, the fighters who never got screen time. And I used my own imaginary Jedi powers in ways far different from Luke, Obi Wan or Vader (for example, I applied them liberally in my mind to baseball).
When a prequel trilogy was announced, I thought I’d be perfect for any number of different roles.
And then the prequel trilogy hit – with such a shitty thud I couldn’t even understand how bad Phantom Menace was until I saw it a second time.
He needs an editor – and a director, actors, something – I thought. How could George Lucas have gone so wrong when any one of his millions of fans knew precisely what needed to be there? I barely accepted it, thinking he’d focus-grouped it to death and couldn’t possibly make the second one as bad. And not-as-bad he made it. There were at least promising moments aside from the brand name in Attack of the Clones. Yoda being a badass, if nothing else. But again, I was certain that in my hands the story and direction would have been so much better.
So that leads us up to Revenge of the Sith. If nothing else, I like the title. And of the dozens of reviews I’ve read, just one is outright bad. The rest take either an optimistic or pessimistic middle-ground. They all carefully outline the universally agreed upon strengths (scenery, battles, Darth’s birth) and weaknesses (horrendous dialogue, unbelievable acting, plot holes and a never-quite convincing descent for Anakin). And I’ve boiled it all down to this: if you still have faith in the final installment after all the bullshit, if you still hope for the conclusion, you’ll enjoy the picture. If you skepticism is stronger, it’ll be a disappointment. We’ll see – at the 12:40 a.m. show.
I’m catching opening night for the spectacle of it if nothing else – that and it’s the very last chapter of Star Wars, a phenomenon that’s spanned my entire life and fueled my imagination as much as anything.


After:
Some of it kicked ass, a lot of it sucked - but at least Revenge of the Sith surpassed it's predecessors in every way. And despite being the capstone of a horrendously disappointing trilogy, it's decent.
My single strongest impression is that Yoda kicks ass. But, to paraphrase the cowboy stranger in Big Lebowski: Yoda Dude, I like your style, but do you have to use so many durned awkward phrases? Sure it's our little green friend's trademark, but back in the day he never talked so much, and now that he's a major character, hearing him
awkwardly twist every phrase is downright annoying. As the general said at one point: "Wake up, I did."
So we got Yoda. And aside from perhaps the General Grievous nonsense, every lightsabre duel kicked ass.
And the Wookies really kick ass - though they were criminally underused. A couple battle scenes? C'mon. They should have been a major force.
The Emperor was impressive. In the trilogy's only convergence of good acting and character development, watching Palpatine grow in power as evil devoured his soul was amazing. The snarls he unleashes when he's fighting Mace Windu and then Yoda are perfect.
The final hour, at least when people weren't talking, at least felt like classic Star Wars. Battles raging in far flung corners of the galaxy, all conveniently ending almost simultaneously.
The various worlds look amazing and the action is beautifully done.

Plot holes are generally much more forgivable than a story that sucks to begin with. And I know it would destroy the fabric of the entire Star Wars universe and make the stories completely pointless, but why didn't Obi Wan make sure Vader was dead when he had the chance? The scene easily could have been redone, with Obi Wan seriously injured himself and barely escaping with his life at the last possible second, unsure of Vader's fate. Walking away is bullshit.
General Grievous is also bullshit - not only is he a slapped together character in the weakest sense, but his name may forever throw negative connotations on a perfectly good Gram Parsons song.
Grievous appears to be some combination of life form and machine, which is illustrative of how far Lucas has fallen. Remember the machine-man villain from the first film? We went from the chilling menace of Darth Vader to the wheezing, stumbly battle-droid-on-'roids of Grievous. Another wasted opportunity for an interesting character.
I never liked the concept of an all-droid army anyway. It's bad storytelling and only serves to as more Lucas digital masturbation.
Perhaps the dialogue between Anakin and Natalie Portman (Padme is a stupid name) would have been better if it were spoken in some made-up Star Wars language, then subtitled, so we wouldn't know how bad it sounds.
My kingdom for a Count Dooku backstory. He could be far and away the most compelling new character of the entire trilogy and should have emerged at the end of the first episode.
I never liked the fact that both CP30 and R2D2 were along for the whole ride.
I would have liked to have seen Degobah.
Maybe it's just fan-boy stuff and actually would have been a misstep, but I'd have liked to see at least a foreshadowing of the Han Solo and Lando Calrissian characters.

Taken as a whole, the Revenge of the Sith's most redeeming quality was simply the fact it was a Star Wars film.
And while that may be enough, just imagine how awesome a good prequel trilogy would have been.