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Wow! How different our impressions were!

I felt that the first Star Wars (Ep. IV) came much closer to capturing the innocence of youth with Luke's feelings for Princess Leia and his efforts to seek adventure. True, Mark Hamill didn't have the chops to stretch his acting very far, but he was much more believable than the current actor portraying Anakin. Granted, Hayden Christensen is probably about the equal of the child actor used in Ep. I, but that doesn't raise either film in my estimation.

I'm forced to agree with many of the current SW critics who've concluded rightly or wrongly that George Lucas has lost his ability to direct actors convincingly, in manner that conveys anything resembling passion. The SW saga is virtually (pun intended) all FX show now and indeed the story suffers for it. Suspension of disbelief has apparantly been traded for the oohs and ahs of an immobile roller coaster ride and character development has been replaced with rapid-fire choreographed action sequences which literally segue into each other from the openning title to end credits, the pace only briefly slowing for the awkward forced romance between the leads. The only logical explanation is that Lucas probably assumes no one will notice the plot flaws and precious coincidences because of all the action crammed into Episode II.

BTW, the silly light-sabre duel between Yoda and Senator bad-ass was comical to the point that my wife was almost in histerics; I'm quite sure that the humor was unintended; in retrospect, this scene is just embarassingly bad. If Lucas had wanted to convey Yoda's power more believably, he could've had the character bring the fight to him, first with his mental control of objects and then with anticipatory movements in the duel. Of course, big surprise, after the scene started with Yoda using his mental prowess Lucas chose to end it with the "whirling dirvish" Yoda because the rapid pacing showed off the improved ILM special effects.

AuPh


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  • Wow! How different our impressions were! - Audiophilander 11:59:22 05/20/02 (0)


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