squidpants

so I saw the new Star Wars movie yesterday, and I enjoyed it. It was a good movie, not just a better movie than the other two new ones, which would be hard not to do, I think. For one thing, the acting seemed better, as Hayden Christensen (Anakin) and Natalie Portman (Padme) were both much less wooden, and there were some genuine emotions, unlike the other two new ones. There were also a lot fewer eye-rolling smirk episodes and much better dialogue - a lot less cliched and hackneyed. My roommate and I (who also wrote about it on his blog) were wondering if this was on purpose, that the previous two movies were merely setting up all the good stuff in this one, or if Lucas has just gotten better at writing. The action scenes were cool and were subtler than the other two: before it sort of seemed like Lucas was saying "look at what we can do with all these special effects," but now they were just enjoyable. The first sequence especially. ((Spoiler alert, sort of)) I also liked how they tied everything into the next movies' stories at the end, both visually and thematically, which was neat. I thought they'd do that anyway, but it was still satisfying to see how they did it. So in short, it was actually a good movie, and a far, far better one than the first two. It makes me wish Lucas would continue and make a fourth, since the new ones seem to be getting better as they went along, as the first was lame, the second was ok, and this one was good. This one also made me want to watch the old movies again. Probably part of Lucas's plan, but hey, it worked.