Blake Schwendiman's Blog and Blook

I've had a few people get the wrong impression about my relationship with Star Wars lately and I want to clarify (because Star Wars is important, too).

First of all, I love Star Wars. I remember seeing Star Wars (A New Hope) at a drive-in theater in Rexburg, Idaho when I was about 7 years old. I remember the sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach when Han Solo, frozen in carbonite was loaded onto Boba Fett's ship at the end of Empire. I remember waiting with anticipation to see Jedi and how I had memorized the song that was supposed to have been played in Jabba's palace by listening to the LP record over and over again before the movie came out.

I remember the excitement I felt watching the trailers for Phantom Menace before I was finally able to see it in 1999. And I remember how forgiving I was about that movie when it came out (so much so that I saw it eight times in theaters). Then Attack of the Clones came out and I had a harder time caring about anyone or anything in the story, but I held fast to the belief that the final episode would resolve the conflicts and provide me with the transitions necessary to tie the Star Wars universe together.

I was at the midnight showing of Revenge of the Sith. I was in line with all the freaks and geeks (and my good friend Chris who may or may not be a freak or geek) and I was excited. We waited for hours to finally take our seats and hours more before the film began. And then it was over. As I walked out of the theater, head low, I felt that I wanted to vomit for disappointment.

It is easy to find the obvious problems with the prequels. The writing is lame (the story and the dialog), the acting is lame, the effects are super but at the expense of just about everything else. I was able to forgive the lame acting and dialog in the first two prequels because I kept expecting the story to be fulfilling. It's the story of how a good young kid becomes ultimately corrupted and turns into the dark overlord of the universe. What a great concept. How does it happen? What terrible thing turns a good person to such evil? These were the expectations I had going into Sith -- expectations and questions that were not resolved to my satisfaction.

Fundamentally what disappointed me about Sith is this: I was unable to believe the descent of Anakin Skywalker to Darth Vader. The premise for his descent was weak. He was a character without any resolution. At one moment he argued about the morality of killing the Sith lord with Mace Windu, but only a few screen minutes later he was comfortable with the idea of killing children. People (even people from Tatooine) don't easily turn from average citizens into child killers. I don't believe it, so I can't follow the character or the story and it all falls apart.

So, I've decided that my Star Wars world is happier if I just pretend that I never saw the prequels.

On a related note, I have a similar problem with the Matrix Revolutions, but that's a whole other story.