Dorkmorial Weekend

A trifecta of dorkeldom this weekend in which I was ably assisted by Lane and Bonedog.

• Saturday: Dune
• Sunday: Return of the King - Extended Version
• Monday: Revenge of the Sith

Dune. Signficantly worse than the idealized version remember. The entire second half is basically a crappy montage. Still tho'. Clearly awesome.

Return of the King. Clearly awesome! All four hours of it. Especially when compared to ...

Revenge of the Sith. Despite what folks say ... it's clearly not awesome.

Here's the thing. The fact that both the acting and the script are terrible is irrelevant - the movie could have been good without that. It could have been incredible if it delivered a convincing portrayal of how Anakin Skywalker becomes Darth Vader. This is, afterall, not just the arc of the first trilogy, but in many ways, the (previously) untold tragic myth for an entire generation.

That arc is advanced by several scenes: Anakin kills the sandpeople (in Clones), Anakin kills Mace Windu, Anakin kills the Jedi, Anakin gets burnt. Only the last of those scenes is actually memorable. The others are both flat and kinda confusing from a narrative standpoint. I mean, I've got no idea what's going on, motivation-wise, in the Mace Windu scene.

It's nice that there are cool lightsaber duels and hot special effects. But the thing is that when I watch Return of the King, I sincerely believe that the destruction of the Ring is The Most Important Thing Ever and worthy of incredible sacrifice. There's no equivalently sincere moment in Star Wars and there really could have been.

However, they both do have villians being burned by volcanoes ... so that's cool.