STAR WARS: THE RISE OF SKYWALKER (spoilers)

Some context.....STAR WARS has been the world of my imagination since before I can remember. I spent my childhood playing in the original trilogy and my university years lamenting the CGI-soullessness of the prequels. (See my essay on why they sucked here.) To add insult to injury it was the very creator who was destroying his legacy, and in doing so, shitting on the amazing contributions of the skilled creators who made the original effects. Selah!  It was his right. And then came the joyous news of the final trilogy and the initial joy at the THE FORCE AWAKENS, reviewed here.  Yes it was fanservicey, but it was also absolutely STAR WARS, and after those awful prequels they had to earn our trust back. And so we voyaged hopefully into the gigantic fuck you that was THE LAST JEDI (review here). I don't want to relitigate that film, suffice to say it was a relief that JJ Abrams was back for the finale.  I was nervous though - was he really going to be able to write the narrative and character-development wrongs of TLJ *AND* provide fans with a satisfying conclusion all in under three hours. Was he gonna tack back to fan service for safety?  And all of this was even more frustrating because with THE MANDALORIAN we now know for sure that Disney *CAN* create material that both feels like STAR WARS but does something new.

What's the verdict?  THE RISE OF SKYWALKER starts off slow, with another pointless McGuffin-led chase around a metaphorical Canto Bight. The widget Rey and her merry band of rebels have to find is a galactic satnav that will lead them to the Emperor and his new fleet of starkiller star destroyers.  Yes, that's right, the Emperor is back - in an audacious retcon that clearly spoiled the answer to the mystery of Rey's lineage in the film's trailer.   This sets us up nicely for the final half of the film - which sits in parallel to RETURN OF THE JEDI.  In that film Luke redeemed his father. In this film, with an act of mercy (hey LORD OF THE RINGS!), Rey (with a side-order of Leia's martyrdom and a fan-service memory of Han) redeems Ben Solo.  They unite to finally off the Emperor for realz this time, trust me. And then Rey adopts the name of Skywalker because why not.

Along the way there's a lot of implied apology from JJ on behalf of himself and Rian Johnson.  Chewie gets a proper scene of mourning when he finds out Leia is dead.  Ghost Luke tells Rey that a lightsaber deserves to be treated with respect. And yes, there's a lot of fan service. The entire existence of Lando in this film is fun but unnecessary as is the return to both Endor and Tatooine, complete with twin suns.  We even see Wedge Antilles return! I mean, don't get me wrong. I am a fan! I was served! There's even fan service of Chris Nolan's DUNKIRK in how the final flotilla of small boats conquers the baddies! 

But not everything's rehashed - some stuff is wonderfully new - most of all in the final celebration at the rebel base, where we clearly get a lovely lesbian kiss.

Where does the film fail?  It contains a lot of characters with nowhere to go.  Poor Kelly Marie Tran has fuck all to do as Rose Tico.  Any hints in TLJ of her being a love interest for Finn is thrown aside. He kinda has a thing with a new character who's also an ex-Stormtrooper and are they really setting her up for another spin off with Lando?  Evil First Order dude Hux has a literally incredible character arc, although I did rather enjoy Richard E Grant as his successor, General Pryde.  Finally, Oscar Issac's Poe doesn't seem to garner any gravitas or wisdom from all the sacrifices made on his behalf in TLJ.  But he does have some nice bants with Keri Russell's Zorii Biss. 

Still for all that, and the slow start, I really did enjoy the final half of this film, and I felt emotionally satisfied by the ending.  None of it beats the feels from the original, but I felt this was as good as we were going to feasibly get. ROGUE ONE remains the best film of the new era.  One can only imagine how good this trilogy might have been had JJ Abrams directed them all.

STAR WARS: THE RISE OF SKYWALKER is rated PG-13, has a running time of 141 minutes and is on global release.

STAR WARS: THE LAST JEDI (Spoilers)

STAR WARS: THE LAST JEDI is the second instalment in the new trilogy of films, that sees the aftermath of the Rebellion's defeat of The Empire in the original trilogy.  In THE FORCE AWAKENS we saw a weakened Republic under attack by the newly resurgent remains of the old Empire, named The First Order.   The Emperor was replaced by Supreme Leader Snoke (Andy Serkis), with General Hux (Domnhall Gleeson) as his military leader, Starkiller Base as his Death Star, Coruscant as its target, and Kylo Ren (Adam Driver) aka Ben Solo as his Vader.  

In response, Republican Senator Leia Organa (Carrie Fisher) was running a covert militarised Resistance starring a dashing pilot called Poe Dameron (Oscar Isaac) and his droid BB8.  The droid happened upon a young girl called Rey (Daisy Ridley), abandoned on the desert planet Jakku, waiting for her parents, and an instinctive force user. They in turn happened upon a stormtrooper defector called Finn (John Boyega) who seemed to exist mostly for comic effect, but also to have an antagonistic relationship with his former boss Captain Phasma (Gwendoline Christie). A largely redundant but popular side character was cantina owner Maz Kanata (Lupita Nyongo) who served to give Rey Luke Skywalker's old lightsaber.

The main questions set up by the film were whether Ben Solo would or could be turned by Rey to the Light Side of the Force having killed his father Han (Harrison Ford) in a test of loyalty to Snoke; who Rey's parents were, thus explaining her exceptional Force strength; and whether Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill), living as a hermit, would be willing to train Rey to that task having failed in training Ben. Ancillary questions were how the First Order has amassed such tech and power so quickly (largely answered in the EU); and who Snoke was (which wasn't.)

And so we get to The Last Jedi, familiar with the grammar of Star Wars movies and the role of the middle chapter in a trilogy as a bridge of sorts, and eager to see if director Rian Johnson (BRICK, LOOPER) could move beyond the excessive fan service that was the only serious flaw that JJ Abrams (STAR TREK) made in his otherwise flawless and joyous The Force Awakens. Additionally, if we read the EU, we might have thought we would see some serious character development for Phasma (given the standalone book).

STAR WARS: THE FORCE AWAKENS - Some thoughts

STAR WARS: THE FORCE AWAKENS is not a movie that I can review with any kind of objectivity. STAR WARS is the universe that I grew up in and escaped to as a kid. It's beyond emotional - it's part of me.  And so factors that others might find negative in this new movie - the fan-service, the derivative plot - well, to me that's just coming home. So rather than a review, here are some thoughts on the new film.

The power of the original Star Wars trilogy was its appeal to bored small-town kids.  You too might just be whisked off into an adventure. In the words of Bowie, you could be a Hero. And the film was cast in those terms - mythic terms of dark versus light.  These were the stories of cowboys and Indians, superheroes and supervillains, but it was also subversive.   It was set in a lived-in world of beaten up spacecraft and mechanical failures.  It's vision was a Utopian one.  There was a mysterious Force that united us all, and it could tempt us to the dark side.  But this was a world in which the bad guy could be redeemed. Where a band of friend could outwit a totalitarian power.  The original trilogy fought the political battles of the seventies.  This was a galaxy in which a human might fight alongside a Mon Calamari with equal respect and where the pilot who blew up the second Death Star was black.  It was a world in which the Princess who needed rescuing could pick up a blaster and rescue herself just fine. And if she was put in a slave's bikini she could use her shackles to strangle her oppressor.

SORORITY ROW - cinematic pot noodle

SORORITY ROW is cheap and nasty. Still, once in a while, typically after a few drinks when there's nothing else in the house and you need to carb up, it's just what you need. It is, in short, a guilty pleasure.

So when I tell you that I had a surprisingly good time watching SORORITY ROW, you'll see where I'm coming from. This movie is pure trash - full of gratuitous tit shots; a risible plot; unscary scary scenes.... It's a slasher movie so bad, it has to be deliberate. But, in the spirit of honesty, it's only fare to 'fess up and say that I laughed hard and long watching SORORITY ROW and positively bounced out of the cinema. And no, before you ask, it had nothing to do with the large gin and tonic at The Imperial beforehand.

The plot is simple. At the start of the university year, a practical joke goes badly wrong and a bunch of sorority sisters hush up the death of their friend, dumping her body rather than call in the cops and getting bounced out of school. Fast forward to graduation day and someone is killing anyone who knows the secret. Is Megan back from the dead? Is her little sister seeking vengeance?

Production values are pretty decent. Indeed, there's an impressive tracking shot that takes us through the sorority house during the opening night party. The acting is also fairly decent, given how hard it is to say so-bad-it's-good lines with a straight face. Perhaps most surprising is that Rumer Willis (daughter of Bruce and Demi) is fine - although she pretty much only has to whimper for the whole film. Best of all, we have Carrie Fisher in a cameo as the House Mother in full on psycho-bitch mode. Genius. As you can imagine, it's the willingness of the movie to spoof its own target demographic that makes it a success. Basically, it's an exercise in depicting - nay lavishing in - the Daily Express' vision of hell: promiscuous teenagers, high on booze and drugs, with too much money, too few scruples, and high-speed internet connections.

We've seen the future, and it's wearing a crystal lip-gloss, a mini-dress, and driving daddy's Porsche Cayenne over a troublesome ex-.

SORORITY ROW is on release in the UK, Australia, Canada and the USA. It opens in two weeks time in Brazil. It opens on October 8th in the Czech Republic and Singapore; October 15th in Argentina; October 22nd in the Netherlands and Venezuela; November 5th in Russia; and November 19th in Portugal.

Kevin Smith retrospective - JAY AND SILENT BOB STRIKE BACK (2001) - Affleck, you the *bomb* in Phantoms yo!

Jay: This isn't fair. We came to Hollywood, I fell in love. Fuckin', we got shot at, we stole a monkey, and I got punched in the motherfucking nuts by a guy named Cock-Knocker.
Banky: You know what? I feel for you boys, I really do, but Miramax - you know, Miramax Films - paid me a shitload of money for Bluntman and Chronic. So it occurs to me that people badmouthing you on some website, is NONE OF MY FUCKING CONCERN!
Silent Bob: Oh, but I think it is... We had a deal with you, on the comics remember, for likeness rights, and as we're not only the artistic basis, but also obviously the character basis, for your intellectual property, Bluntman and Chronic. When said property was optioned by Miramax Films, you were legally obliged to secure our permission to transfer the concept to another medium. As you failed to do that, Banky, you are in breach of the original contract, ergo you find yourself in a very actionable position.
Jay: Yeah.

After the religious satire cum road movie that was DOGMA, Kevin Smith kicked back with his highest-budget movie to date, JAY AND SILENT BOB STRIKE BACK. Although they are very different in tone and aspiration, the two movies actually share the same structure. After all, what is JAY AND SILENT BOB STRIKE BACK if not a Hollywood satire cum road movie?

The plot of the movie is, once again, very simple. Jay and Silent Bob realise that Miramax is making a comic book movie based on characters based on Jay and Silent Bob. So they head to Hollywood to get their cut of the proverbial phat cash. Along the way they engage in a bunch of shenanigans that allow Kevin Smith to have a giant love-in with all his favourite actors. As such, any hope of actually satirising Hollywood is neutered. It's hard to land a sucker-punch when you're fisting the head of the studio.

For all that, JAY AND SILENT BOB STRIKE BACK is arguably more entertaining than DOGMA insofar as it panders to the fans' desire to be part of the "in-joke" and namecheck the cameos and movie references. Some of the skits are genuinely hillarious - not least the early scenes with Jason Lee in Brodie mode and later scenes with Jason Biggs. And, as far as I'm concerned, you can never have too much of Jason Mewes' inspired pot-head stylings. But, unlike MALLRATS, which is also a flawed but occasionally extremely funny movie, I haven't revisited JAY AND SILENT BOB in a long while. It's the classic problem with parodies - no matter how well done, they age horribly.

Or maybe I'm just playing into Smith's post-modern move with my rancid stylings?!*.

JAY AND SILENT BOB STRIKE BACK was released in 2001 and 2002. It is available on DVD replete with extras.

*Banky: That's what the internet is for. Slandering others anonymously. Stopping the flick isn't gonna stop that.

THE WOMEN (2008) - deliberately confused?

THE WOMEN is a rather baffling film about four privileged middle-aged women who are struggling to balance careers with families and to maintain dignity in the face of societal pressures to look young. It centres on a country-house wife called Mary (Meg Ryan) who has put her career on hold to be a supportive wife and mother only to discover that her husband is cheating on her with a perfume counter girl (Eva Mendes). Not only that, but Mary is betrayed by her best friend Sylvie (Annette Bening), a magazine editor who trades gossip on her friend's marriage in order to keep her job.

The message of the movie seems to be that female friendship is as important, if not more so, than a good marriage. It's also that women should be "selfish" and put their career and happiness first. Moreover, women should not bow to societal pressure to look young or have sex early. As Annette Bening's character says "This is my face, deal with it." All good, empowering stuff.

Then again, the message of the movie seems to be "It's hypocritical: it's complicated". After all, how can we not notice that Meg Ryan has had significant and devestating plastic surgery, and looks very different from Annette Bening who is ageing more naturally. Mary's mother (Candice Bergen) has a face lift, and Mary supports that decision. Maybe female empowerment is about being empowered to cave in to pressure and not feel guilty?

I'm not sure if THE WOMEN is a good movie or not. It seems to be genuinely confused about what it wants to say and as such it's hard to pin it down. The performances are fine and it looks polished. The issues it raises are important and of interest to modern career women. Yes, it's slippery in terms of its messages but maybe that's deliberate - maybe that accurately reflects women's odd relationship with their own self-image.

Insofar as the movie provoked me into thinking about big life-issues margibally more than it irritated me with it's clumsy product placement, I guess I would give it a qualified thumbs-up.

THE WOMEN is on release in the USA, Canada, Romania, Turkey and the UK. It opens in October in Puerto Rico, Argentina, Russia, South Korea, Poland, Italy and Spain. It opens in November in the Czech Republic, Norway and the Netherlands. It opens in December 11th in Germany; on December 26th in Finland and on January 28th in France.

THE ARISTOCRATS - I get it. In fact, I got it all too soon.

THE ARISTOCRATS is a documentary about a joke. The joke is a shaggy dog story designed to shock people into laughter. As comedian Paul Reiser says, "It's all set-up". So we see 100 comedians (apparently, I didn't count) tell the joke. It goes like this: A wife, husband, kids, dog (variations thereupon) go into a talent agent's office. They say, "You gotta hire us. We have this great act!" So the talent agent says, "So what is the act?" They then recount the act. It is the nastiest, crudest, most vicious stuff you ever heard of. There needs to be sex (incest, besti*lity, whatever), excrement, the most gross things you can think of. Each comedian goes gross in their own particular way, spins the story wild and large - two minutes, twenty minutes - manic, deadpan - the most disgusting stuff you can think of. The family come to the end of describing the act. The talent agent sits back and says, "Wow. That's some act! So what do you call that?" The family responds in chorus, "The Aristocrats!"

At this point you might be thinking, "I don't get it." And that begs the question whether it is a valid criticism of this documentary that despite the fact that it features many comedians all telling a supposedly hysterical joke, the film is only sporadically funny. In fact, the only two times I really laughed, the humour did not derive from the Aristocrats joke itself, but from the fact that the comediens were doing impressions of famous people telling the joke. Kevin Pollack tells the joke as Christopher Walken and Mario Cantone tells the joke as Liza Minelli. Pure Comedy Genius.

I think it is fine if we don't find the re-telling of the joke that funny. We can still take three things from the movie. First, the movie is a masterclass for wannabe comedians, because from the way in which the different comedians approach the joke you can see something of their technique and talent. Not only that, but you discover some really great comedians that haven't done a lot of TV or film before. Second, you can enjoy this movie in the same way as you get a perverse kick out of a car crash: it's horrible, you feel gross for being interested, and yet there is something compelling about watching Carrie Fisher a.k.a. Princess Leia saying "my mother was a golden showers queen" when we know that in real life her mum is the peaches-and-cream cutie from Singin' In the Rain, Debbie Reynolds.

Third, there is a social point to be understood about how society has changed and what is funny has changed with it. Back in the day when female stand-up comedians couldn't wear sleeveless dresses on network television for fear of immodesty , telling a joke about rim-jobs would have been daring and provocative - almost political. In today's world, sexual acts really aren't taboo. I mean, we have golden showers, rim-j*bs and f*ltching on South Park and a young girl pleasuring herself with a champagne bottle live on British network TV. This is our new "reality". The new taboos are jokes about 9/11 and racism. So unless, you recast the joke, it is devalued.

The comedy masterclass, the bizarro-Carrie Fisher moment and the point about how taboos have changed are all valid subjects for a movie and interesting up to a point. My real criticism of this movie is therefore not that I didn't find it that funny, but that it is just too long. We get all the messages of the film after about 45 minutes and the remainder is just a bit repetitive.

THE ARISTOCRATS premiered at Sundance 2005 and went on limited release in the US and UK in autumn 2005. (The fact that the movie was Unrated by the MPAA meant that some exhibitors would not show it.) It goes on cinematic release in the Netherlands on the 9th February 2006 but was released on Region 2 DVD last week.

The decline and fall of the STAR WARS franchise

I am the kid in class who knew the script of the original Star Wars trilogy backwards and I still have the Millennium Falcon sitting on top of my wardrobe. So it’s hard for me to review any Star Wars flick with reasoned objectivity. However, in the light of the release of the final Star Wars flick, I want to take a moment to consider what was so good about the original trilogy and what has gone wrong with the recent films. I am assuming, here, that you all know the basic plot and characters. But for any of you who don’t, there is a full plot summary at the end of this post. Needless to say, it is spoiler-tastic.

To my mind, what makes the first trilogy so resonant is the three-in-one mix of mythic/pagan archetypes; a Christian story of redemption; and a fully realised, limitless fantasy world. The gospel may be The Greatest Story Ever Told, but Star Wars amps it up by setting it in a galaxy far, far away, with weird-ass creatures, cool weaponry and cultural references from Samurais to Nazis. The acting may have been wooden and the dialogue ropey, but when you have a story arc this engaging and larger-than-life characters, who’s complaining? My theory is that in the new trilogy, Lucas undermines each of these three supporting features in a manner that leaves the shoddy dialogue and acting exposed. In addition, there is a fourth problem with the new trilogy, which I suspect is simply unavoidable.

Let’s start with the first point. I think the new trilogy is less engaging than the old because we have less archetypal characters and more fillers. In New Hope, Empire and Jedi, you could count the key characters on one hand (Luke, Han, Leia, R2D2, C3PO and Vader) and the secondary characters on the other (Chewie, Yoda, Obe-Wan, Jabba & The Emperor). All these people had well-defined personalities and relationships and were instantly memorable. In the second trilogy a couple of these guys reappear but as shadows of themselves, both in terms of characterisation on the page and the actors’ performances. Hayden Christiansen gives an inept performance as Anakin/Vader. Instead of portraying a man whose soul is corrupted, he just comes across as a petulant teen. Ewan MacGregor pastiches Sir Alec Guinness’ performance as Obe-Wan, which was itself a lazy performance. He is egged on by a script that transforms Obe-Wan into a Han-like Bond-with-a-beard. As for the the new characters, these vary from the insufficiently drawn (Mace Windu) to the racially offensive (Jar-Jar Binks). Indeed, one of the tragedies of the new trilogy is seeing an actress like Natalie Portman perform terribly, not least in the laugh-out-loud birth scene at the end of Revenge of the Sith. Only Ian McDiarmid as Senator Palpatine manages to rise above the mere dialogue and give a performance of diabolical subtlety.

The second problem concerns the use of Christian motifs. The beauty of the original trilogy is that the plot has taken us to a point where the Republic has fallen into decay and its religion has gone the way of the Jedi. Overt religious references are largely limited to, “may the Force be with you,” which mirrors the Christian “Peace be with you”. However, the subtext of the original trilogy is full of subtle references to Christian themes, aside from the more obvious plot strand which has Luke redeeming his father. For insatnce, just before firing a shot on the Death Star, Luke switches off his targeting device and “trusts in the Force.” The key point here is that the religious imagery is pushed on the audience so far but no further: there is no simple allegory. Better still, the precise nature of the Force is left vague. The Jedi are enigmatic and attractive. By contrast, in the second trilogy, a lot of this material is pushed further. Instead of resonating with Christian themes, the new trilogy adopts them in a clumsy, vulgar manner. A case in point is the assertion that Anakin was the result of a virgin birth. This is made all the more absurd because in the same breath, it is revealed that one can have a sort of blood-test for “midi-chlorians” or whatever, that indicate one’s ability to use the Force. So, on the one hand, the Jedi are genetic freaks? On the other, this is meant to be some sort of mystical conception? Make up your mind!

This brings me to the third point, which concerns the brilliantly imagined, fantasy world that Lucas creates. In the original trilogy, Lucas succeeds in imagining a number of different backdrops for the foreground action – from seedy cantinas on outer-worlds, to gleaming anti-septic battle ships, to asteroid belts. Each world has its specific hardware, life-forms, languages and costumes. The master-stroke is that the worlds look inhabited. Emperors may have shiny new star-ships, but rebels have visibly battle-scarred pieces of junk. You also have to applaud Lucas for having the balls to make a number of his characters speak languages we cannot understand – notably, R2D2 and Chewbacca. This builds up the credibility of the world we are watching. I love the fact that we infer what these characters are saying from the other characters’ reactions. One of my biggest criticisms is that, starting in Return of the Jedi but continuing in the new triology, we see the rising use of subtitles, which never fails to take me out of the movie.

However, my biggest criticism regarding the production design is that the visual purity of the original trilogy is diluted in the new trilogy. In A New Hope we had the clearly defined and contrasting yellow desert wastes of Tatooine and then the clinical white and black of the Death Star. In Empire Strikes Back we had the remorseless white ice planet of Hoth contrasted with the misty, brown-green swamp of Dagobah and the pastel Cloud City. In Return of the Jedi, once again we have desert waste followed by lush green of Endor and clinical Death Star. In each case these worlds are clearly defined with broad visual tokens – the backdrop is not cluttered or over-designed – I suspect largely because of budget and technical limitations. By contrast, in the new trilogy, each world is over-designed to the point of bewilderment. The mis-use of computer graphics leaves the eye nowhere to rest and distracts us from the beauty and originality of this star-ship or that costume. Nowhere do we have an iconic style moment similar to Princess Leia’s in New Hope or an iconic new weapon or ship. Yes, it’s neat to see a double-ended light-sabre, but before we can get excited about it, it gets trumped by a droid with four arms and four weapons!

Each battle is more complicated in its choreography and effects than the next, and the whole thing reminded me of that line from the Hitch-hikers Guide to the Galaxy about believing eight impossible facts before breakfast. (I paraphrase.) I struggle to think of any confrontation that can match the fatal duel between Darth Vadar and Obe-Wan Kenobi in New Hope, or the final duel between Luke Skywalker and Darth Vadar and Return of the Jedi. These were impressive because of the beauty of the sword-fighting but also because there was so much at stake emotionally. In the first, we have martyrdom; in the second, redemption. No amount of multiplication of light-sabres can compensate for the dramatic vacuity of the battles in the new trilogy. (My riposte to people who say I should just relax and enjoy the spectacle.) Of course, there is one duel in the new trilogy that could have matched both the style of the original duels and the dramatic weight – that is the duel between Anakin Skywalker and Obe-Wan Kenobi at the end of Revenge of the Sith. After all, the stakes are Anakin’s soul, not to mention whether the Republic remains free or becomes an Empire. However, George Lucas makes a pigs ear out of this scene, with dialogue more than usually absurd and the duel resolved not by the flick of a sword but by a reverse somersault. Insane!

So, in terms of characters, thematic material and the production design, to my eye the new trilogy desecrates the original trilogy. This is the result of a lot of conscious decisions on the part of the screenwriters, production designers and ultimately, the director. And that is before we get to the glaring plot inconsistencies that bespeak of an indifference to the die-hard fans on the part of the film-makers. Still, moving beyond sins of commission and omission, there is another major problem with the new trilogy that I feel is not the fault of the production team.

A New Hope, Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi were engaging because ordinary film-goers were seeing the story through the eyes of a bunch of under-dogs. From low-level robots to farm-hands and con-artists – the vast majority of the main characters in the first trilogy are ordinary people called upon to be heroes. This is not only romantic, but helps to keep the action down to manageable size. You can empathise more with a bunch of guys trying to Take That Hill than with seeing an mult-planet war played out on a map. The problem with Phantom Menace, Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith is that, of necessity, the story is de-personalised. After all, the new trilogy takes place at the height of the Republic. So, you can’t have Leia and Han running round the galaxy in a beat-up motor sticking up two fingers to the guys in charge. The good guys ARE the guys in charge. Leia’s mum, Padme, is an elected monarch and then Senator, and the Jedi are not eccentric wise old men living in caves but an inter-galactic Interpol. Indeed, much of the plot involves good and bad guys brokering deals in the Senate and arguing about subsidiarity and trade tariffs. The whole thing is reduced to a cross between Yes, Minister and C-Span – hardly enough to get the pulses racing. As a result, with the exception of the final duel between Anakin and Obe-Wan, most of the fights and chases in the “new trilogy” are padding. They help pass the time, sell toys and provide the basis for video games, but they do not propel the plot. The real nuts and bolts are provided by old men trying to manipulate each other in council chambers.

All in all, I would have rather left Anakin Skywalker’s back story to my own imagination rather than to George Lucas. The entire new trilogy is populated by irritating or vacuous characters uttering ridiculous dialogue, performed badly. The plot is inconsistent with the first trilogy on a number of key points and, as the action is motivated by political deals rather than battles, those battles are simply CGI-porn that carry no emotional weight. While the plot and script are under-cooked, the production design is over-cooked thanks to an egregious use of CGI and a lack of visual purity. However, this does not detract from George Lucas’ achievement in creating the original trilogy. The masterly use of archetypes, religious imagery and spare visuals created a richly imagined world populated by characters that we cared about desperately. Thus, while A New Hope and Empire Strikes Back are in my Movie Pantheon, the new trilogy should be tossed into the Cinematic Trashcan of Shame. (And, if you’re wondering, Return of the Jedi makes for a perfectly good summer blockbuster!)

STAR WARS EPISODE III: THE REVENGE OF THE SITH is on global release. Star Wars Episodes I, II, IV, V and VI are available on DVD. Be careful when buying the original trilogy as the “special edition” contains extra and altered footage which, to my mind, imports the failings of the new trilogy and corrupts the integrity of the original.

Here follows a plot summary for all six movies: The movie is both a micro- and macro-level story about the fall of a good man and his redemption. The quirk is that the redemption story was told in the old trilogy, released between 1977 and 1983. The story of the fall is told in the new trilogy, released between 1999 and 2005. Looked at chronologically, the story opens in The Phantom Menace, the first of the new trilogy. As the story opens, a group of planets are co-existing peacefully, governed by a democratic Senate and policed by warrior-priests known as the Jedi. The Jedi are able to harness “The Force” – an energy field common to all life-forms – that allows them certain physical and mental powers. However, these powers can be used for both good and bad. In the first movie, Senator Palpatine manipulates the Senate into invading one the planet Naboo and electing him Chancellor. Naboo is ruled by a democratically elected Queen, Padme Amidala. In the meantime, a good Jedi named Obe Wan Kenobi helps free a young boy, Anakin Skywalker, from slavery, and takes him on as an apprentice in the way of the force. In the second movie of the new trilogy, Attack of the Clones, Chancellor Palpatine further manipulates the Senate into granting him sweeping emergency powers and initiates the Clone Wars against the rebel Jedi Darth Sidious. Anakin Skywalker and Padme marry in secret. In the third movie, Revenge of the Sith, Padme become pregnant and Anakin prophecies that she will die in childbirth. He is lured to the dark side of the Force by the promise that he will learn how to keep her alive. Thus ensnared, Anakin massacres the good Jedi, and in a duel with Obe Wan suffers massive burns which result in him wearing the iconic body suit and helmet. It is revealed that Darth Sidious and Chancellor, now Emperor, Palpatine are one and the same. He has orchestrated the dissolution of the Republic from the inside. Padme dies in childbirth and her twins, Luke and Leia, are split up and sent into hiding.

Now we jump forward in movie time to A New Hope, the first movie of the original trilogy. Leia is a Princess, Senator & covert leader of a rebel alliance against the Empire. She is captured by Vader and held prisoner upon a new weapon of mass destruction, the Death Star. Luke is a teenage farm-hand who, in a quirk of co-incidence only possible in the movies, intercepts Leia’s distress call in the shape of two droids called R2D2 & C3PO. Luke finds Obe Wan Kenobi who teaches him about the force, but omits to tell him that his father became Vader, or that he has a sister. Luke, Obe Wan and the droids rescue Leia, aided by a smuggler called Han Solo and his co-pilot Chewbacca. Obe Wan is killed by Vader, and the rebels then launch a successful attack on the Death Star. In the second movie of the original trilogy, The Empire Strikes Back, Luke is trained by another old Jedi, Yoda, but abandons his training to rescure Leia, Han, Chewbacca and the droids, who have been captured by Vader and used as bait in a client state run by reformed smuggler, Lando Calrissian. In the escape, Luke learns that Vader is his father and loses his hand. Han is frozen in carbonite and shipped off to gang-leader Jabba the Hutt. In the third movie, Return of the Jedi, Luke, Leia, Lando and the droids rescue Han from Jabba the Hutt. Luke visits a dieing Yoda and discovers he is Leia’s sister. He rejoins Han and Leia to lead an assault a base station for a new Death Star on Endor. They are aided by Ewoks. Luke tells Leia she is her sister and that he is going to the Death Star to redeem Vader. The rebels successfully blow up the base, and Lando leads a strike force in a successful attack on the Death Star proper. Meanwhile, Vader and the Emperor try to turn Luke to the dark side of the Force. Luke refuses so the Emperor starts to kill him. This prompts the necessary redemption: Vader saves Luke, kills the Emperor and then dies. Luke escapes from the Death Star just before it blows up and rejoins his friends on Endor. The Republic can now be restored.