Former TFN Staffer Darin Smith sends in his thoughts on Episode III, and in his words "just an old-timer Star Wars fan's musings on the film and his adventure getting to see it":

by Darin Smith

This is Darin Smith--best known as Scott Chitwood's co-conspirator in starting TFN way back when we were in college. I've been frozen in carbonite for a long time, but I was temporarily unfrozen to watch Episode 3, and I thought I would send in my thoughts.

Here is my story from my midnight screening. Beware, there might be minor spoilers inside. I originally wrote this for my family (parents, sisters, and nephews). I've tried to keep spoilers to a minimum (or at least de-fuse them), but if you are trying to stay away from anything plot-related, you might want to avoid this to be safe.

In short, 2 thumbs up from an old-school, die-hard Star Wars fan.

On Wednesday night, five of my friends and I went to see Episode III: Revenge of the Sith. The Force seemed to be with me: though I couldn't get tickets to the DLP theater, I got tickets to the theater with the biggest screen in Texas, and great sound. I went down there after work and picked up the tickets without having to stand in line. I got everyone together and we all got to the theater by 10:00pm (for a midnight showing) in one car--avoiding parking lot hassles. We thought we'd have to stand in line, but they started seating as soon as we arrived. We got seats on the side, but the optimum distance from the screen; so they were reasonably good seats. We now had 2 hours to burn, which we did.

Now comes the first part of the drama for the night. Imagine you are a movie theater owner. You have 1200 foaming-at-the-mouth, dyed-in-the-wool, stark-raving-mad Star Wars fans in your theater--many in costume with realistic looking lightsabers, many have camped out outside your theater for days to be first in line. The film distributor has spliced 20 minutes of previews onto the copy of the film. Do you:

a) Skip the previews entirely, just turning on the projector with the film cued up at 12:01am sharp?
b) Start the previews 20 minutes before 12:01am?
c) Wait until 12:02am, then start the 20 minutes of previews before letting these lunatic fans see the movie they are clamoring for?

Of course, the logical answer is c! Who in their right mind would choose one of the other options?

Every time the green PREVIEW screen would come up, the audience let out a collective "boo" punctuated with some Wookiee growls (some of which I was responsible for). Most of the previews produced applause, though, because whoever put that set of previews together knows their audience: "The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe" and "The Fantastic Four" were two of the previews shown. Star Wars fans, while we may appear at first glance to be rabid, are actually lovers of fine literature and comic books.

So the previews are over, the movie starts and I'm loving it. Even though some of the acting and dialogue isn't the best, it is far better than anything we've seen in the prequels to date. I have a few minor nit-picks with the film, but overall it is the film I've been waiting over 20 years to see. We get right to the point that every Star Wars fan has wanted to see all his/her life, when...

The film jams and melts in the projector. Nobody is manning the projection booth, so it takes people getting up out of the audience to go get someone to shut off the projector and work on the splice. They take about 10 minutes to splice the film, and when it comes back on...

They have skipped a few minutes of footage that ONLY included the birth of two characters and the transformation of one. NNNNOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!

All I can say is--that theater better be glad all those lightsabers in the audience were only *toy* lightsabers. Otherwise, Vader would have looked like a saint in comparison to what would have happened had they been real.

Now I have to make sure I see it in DLP, to be guaranteed I get to see that part of the film. That means fighting crowds and long lines, as there is only one DLP theater in the whole of D/FW. DLP, if you do not know, is an entirely electronic means of displaying a film. It is based on chips made by my former employer, Texas Instruments, which have micro-mirrors that are movable and each one can be individually commanded (addressed). So they basically have a computer with the movie stored digitally on a hard drive, and project the film using this technology. There is no film to break, melt, or get scratched. For a film like Episode 3, which was shot digitally, there was never a film negative involved at all--so there are no chemical blotches and the color stays consistent. Digital cinema is fantastic in this regard. Lucas has been pushing it, and when it takes off it will really improve the movie-going experience. It will eliminate tragedies such as what befell me last night.

Now, on to the film:

I immensely enjoyed it. This is the film we should have gotten in the first place. I don't mind it being Episode 3, but it does make me wonder just how much weed was smoked in producing Episodes 1 and 2. This one (for the most part) feels like Star Wars of old. It is much more in line with The Empire Strikes Back than anything Lucas has made since. I felt that Natalie Portman did her best acting in this film, and Ian McDiarmid was perfect as Palpatine. Ewan McGregor was more convincing as Obi Wan than ever. Yoda finally "felt" right. Jar Jar was present, but only as scenery. Hayden Christensen, while performing better than he did in Episode 2, was the worst of the bunch. I just have my doubts as to whether this kid can do any emotion other than "brooding" convincingly. Fortunately for him, his character is supposed to be that way most of the time. The kid just can't do "romantic" or "wise" or "responsible".

While the swordplay is exciting, it's getting to where it looks a bit like a twirler with her baton more than fighting. The swordplay in Empire was exciting, Jedi was equally exciting in that respect, and I believe it reached perfection in Episode I (one of the things done RIGHT in Episode I was the swordfighting). Episodes 2 and 3 are a bit too fancy, in my opinion. Maybe it's just the karateka and fencing student in me, but it looks inefficient & forced, and a little fake as it is sped up so much. "Video-gamish" would be my term. However, that's a nit-pick. This film certainly has weight to it and delivers what the fans wanted. If it bears any resemblance to Earth history, it would be Europe during World War II; and what might have happened had Hitler won.

Things not done so well:

• It is hard to tell, aside from how big Padme's belly gets, how much time is passing. It looks to be happening over the course of a few days, but obviously happens over the course of a few months.
• I'd have liked to have seen Anakin struggle a bit more in deciding the course of his fate.
• It would have been nice to see some reasoning given for a particular Jedi Master's retreat--something along the lines of him realizing he could not win. It just isn't convincing to run from a battle where you seem to be holding your own pretty well, unless you know you cannot win.
• As much as I like Wookiees, some of that part seemed a bit contrived. I would have preferred Chewie's part to have simply been a cameo in battle or something like that--at least something more subtle than what played out on screen. It seems rather convenient that everybody in that Galaxy has some odd connection to anyone they run into later.