Tour de Force
A Master Pundit throws down for Star Wars.
WRITTEN, PRODUCED, DIRECTED AND EDITED
BY GREGORY WEINKAUF
George Dear,
Met we have, in 1999, briefly albeit. Scan you I did, in the Academy Theatre during a USC gala, not for
midichlorian count to test you, but for your corporeal composition to determine: Of binary code or alien
latex were you? Thankfully, no -- a human, Mr. Lucas, ostensibly you are. Perchance a devil, but
probably just a human. Relieved I was, for your movie Star Wars: Episode I -- The Phantom Menace
worried had me. Assured be you, okay I liked it, at the Chinese on opening night at midnight -- and the
first prequel have I revisited, happily, many times, along with its counterpart, Star Wars Episode II --
Attack of the Clones. Coming from this Elder and Master among your Franchise Faithful, a significant
point this is! Derision for my appreciation have I reaped! Stalwart with much effort remained I have! And
yet...clouded your vision has been. Glorious visual spectacle via your droid armies and twisted enabler
Darth McCallum indeed imparted you have, but to the heart of storytelling what price incurred this has?
Not among the throngs of hasty media snappers count me may you (lame Ewok jokes find here you will
not), for, at present, two full weeks of contemplation have I afforded your new marketing juggernaut,
Star Wars: Episode III -- Revenge of the Sith. To an era an end it marks, for you and your minions,
yes, but for me also. In 1977, your first Star Wars movie with a child’s heavy sense of obligation I
attended (on television on Saturday better and free entertainments were there not?), and Sith likewise I
attended. Less a fan was I starting out this final time, taking my seat among preview peers and punks,
than a generous supporter...of what, together here consider we shall.
Sith, of course, not a movie truly is. Incoherent on its own it quavers! Mad! Dangerous, even! Of Pop
Tarts, pencil cases and plastic Padmés is your Empire built; without them the younglings (Jesus...
younglings...okay, back into character) would not to their very dreams your ass-silly trademarked
names take! But a good cog Sith is in its fabulously enjoyable machine (a machine which, like the
Second Death Star, after the failures of Hollywood’s heinous “entertainment” machine was modelled),
and on its own indeed full of sound and fury Sith is, signifying something -- but enough?...not quite.
(Whether or not the tale by an idiot is told, my place to decree it is not.)
In beleaguered popular culture, the path to the Dark Side with narrative non-sequiturs is strewn! (Than
your own countless imitators no further look.) With all due respect: Balance you lack! Do you not feel
The Force guiding you? To become a filmmaker takes the deepest commitment, the most serious mind.
You are reckless! Concentrate! What of this new fascinating-looking yet easily-defeated villain, General
Grievous? (On innumerable stupid names get me started not!) Shades of the woefully-dispatched Darth
Maul he summons! A waste it is! Of which speaking: Where are the Wookiees to us you promised? A
couple of routine Chewbacca shots and those few seconds of blurry battle-fur? Whale Rider among
Gungans? No David Prowse in Vader suit? What of arbitrary “sinkhole planets” and “lava planets” and
“pretty-lake-in-Italy planets” and the-hell-whatever-else planets? (A single celestial body boasting at
least two distinct climatic or topographical regions your weird little galaxy hosts not?) What of the terrible
crime of to us delivering Cinematic Legend Christopher Lee (thrilling cohort of your other auxiliary
baddie, Peter Cushing), and then from us swiftly snatching him away? (To you and your fellow lava-geek
Jackson Peter, belatedly I exhort: No mere expendable henchman is Lee! From decades of geekery
learned nothing have you? Well, at least his character’s execution deign to allow into your big-screen
theatrical version you did. For that kudos.) Moreover, what of all these totally ass-wimpy Jedi? No
prescience of this doom-bringing “Order 66” among their own bone-headed clone troops have they?
Trained for millennia for naught, have they? Shocked at the loosey-gooseyness I am! Hesitate to strike
a known Sith at point-blank range does erstwhile merciless Master Windu?? Languidly expire of
some brief, vague pre-natal “depression” does spunky Senator Amidala??? Pussy-out totally at
the end does the greatest Jedi of them all???? Hell what the?????
Way-neato Sith is, but its screenplay’s logic I understand not.
Which to the spectacle brings us. Bravo. Too nauseatingly digital your scenarios are -- remember:
already a world of endless wonders your human audiences inhabit! -- however, magnificent in its chosen
medium your team’s work is. Again, bravo. From the punchy opening space battle (alas, without the
nerd-voiced Super Battle Droids and bouncy-ball R2-D2 antics done I could have) to the racing
challenge of wingding-y Wheel Bike™ against belching Boga™, stimulated and delighted I was. Planet
“Mustafar” a typically stupid name has (near to planet "Saddamo," it is?), but even in its total absurdity
(and cringingly salient lava’n’bathos Rings-envy; just as with Ridley Scott-envy Episode II gushed, for
better and worse), this über-extreme “Battle of the Heroes” sensational is!
Here special mention of the Truest Heroes of the Star Wars franchise be made must: Of Super
Composer John Williams, who with Phantom Menace in my opinion peaked (“Duel of the Fates,”
fortunately, reprised here over explosive Yoda battling nasty Sidious is); Of Master Editor and Sound
God (and Director) Ben Burtt, who through thick and thin attended his ambition-mad peer to tight and
lavish montages into our wide orbs present, to sonic dreamscapes upon our tickled cochleae bestow; Of
Superior Director Terry Gilliam, who to you allegedly the notion donated of insidiousness not merely
bombastic being (à la Vader) but behind a winsome, bureaucratic smile lurking (à la Michael Palin in
Brazil; 20th-anniversary happy); And of Semi-Exiled Producer Gary Kurtz, in his own right a storytelling
genius, who -- despite among the beardie-weirdies the weirdiest beardie boasting -- to the real, original,
non-“Special-Edition”-up-fucked Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back their respective brilliant,
timeless-classic liftoffs afforded, and dead in Jedi Han Solo he would have had, had the dramatic
narrative its own inherent ass-silliness according to his aborted plan resisted. Unhappily have also I heard
that young Solo in Sith’s early drafts you axed. To goofy schmaltz in ‘83 leave him you did, and to us
today the character you deny when want him we do? (Well oh.)
Of which speaking, the human performers in Sith for the most part the gleeful comradeship, harrowing
heroism and delicious interstellar bickering of The Original Trilogy lack. Real get! Not merely luminous
beings but crude matter are we! High like all your other rich-asshole Baby Boomer peers have you been!
Sad this is, that knew you not the significance of having another saucy JAP in all three movies on board,
and to mere preening and posturing left the outrageously willing Natalie Portman-Hershlag! (Though with
one wrenching sob get me she actually did.) Here in Sith, Portman-Hershlag, plus your celebrated “bad
boy” (read: “Hollywood Whore In Severe ‘Alternative’ Denial”) Ewan McGregor, and pouty kid
Hayden Christensen actually fine work do, but in spite of your machinations and hilariously flat
exposition this is, not because of them! Also, may they the trio of actors be with the most facial moles in
cinematic history sporting? The Mole People! (Though of course Photoshopping-out that squishy
forehead doozie McGregor’s specialty is.) Incidentally, Chosen One and others considered, why all the
lead trio in The Original Trilogy Americans were, and yet here -- represented by Scot and Israeli and
lucky-duck Canuck (“Can I learn aboot The Foorce tomooroh, eh?”), you’ve to far, far away our
national treasure taken? For Hamill and Fisher and Ford and Williams cheered we! Actors and sound
stages and designers and crews in mostly-otherwise-ruined America still have we not?
Of course, Mr. Lucas, despite your remarkable revelations (most closely yourself to heroic robot R2-D2
likening and of your whole epic offering, “It’s ultimately R2’s story”), believe I not that of your franchise
the main character a squeaky garbage pail-shaped robot is. Not either faggy "Goldenrod." Nor The
Mole Brigade. Nay, in Sith, most knowing you seem of Ian McDiarmid’s character (from Senator to
Chancellor to Emperor Palpatine, notwithstanding yet another stupid name which like dismayingly lumpy
hot cereal sounds) whose terrible creepiness to the fore here in bravura fashion comes. Disturbing and
eerily gay-unfriendly his Wacko Jacko-like seduction of Little Orphan Annie Skywalker is! And yet, by
the point the conclusion of Episode VI you reach (Kurtzless, alas), buy your "reconciliation" of Vader
firmly do I not! Stand trial for countless murders his smug, luminous apparition should (of the actor
playing him in which "Edition" regardless). Mythic wonder this choice is not; cheap, lazy "feel-good"
storytelling this choice is.
Mr. Lucas -- despite “Sith” a very convenient anagram for another foul entity being -- your latest (and in
this franchise last?) work I nonetheless curiously enjoy. A ruthlessly downbeat Summer Blockbuster and
trilogy-capper: the first of its kind could it be? Despite seeming into a David Bowie-like stupor of
schmoozing and copycatting lesser contemporary artists to occasionally tumble, a pioneer still you are?
Hope so, I do! Truly disturbing and tragic the giddy-romance-to-mechanized-doom of poor, paternally-
bereft Anakin is! (The Padmé-death dream shots, too, nicely ‘70s-cheapo are.) An astonishingly
effective ending Sith has! For delivering the best heavy-handed populist entertainment of this or possibly
any other year, applaud you I do!
And yet...awry something is. Entirely your fault it is not. A-changin', the times are. The Original Trilogy
with the first blush of the pop-music (not cinematic) New Wave coincided. Fun we had! Thrills we
experienced! Mynocks we hunted! Wampae we escaped! Semi-metaphysical wonders we pondered
(over and over again Alec Guinness de Cuffe’s calm mortal departure and wondrous spiritual return we
debated -- not unlike Liam Neeson’s fine work; why from Sith excised was he, the way by?). After The
Shit Decade of the 1990s, however, meaner and less patient our collective sensibility is. Thus, from the
uplift of heroism to massive global tragedy our attention turns. Fantasy such as yours no more healthy,
brief storytelling escapism affords us but our mostly-hideous world -- wannabe-tyrant in office! --
reflect directly back to us it does!
Even Yoda, his name (like Qui-Gon’s) a trite bastardization of spiritual-physical refinement, changed for
the grim has. Throughout the prequels scowl incessantly he does! And croak as if Frank Oznowicz ten
packs a day been smoking has! Scowl and mope and grimace and bring everybody down this Prequel
Yoda does! Not the wise-yet-wry Yoda with whom initially became we enamoured is he! (If only
continued living Jim Henson had.) As but one element of your expansive (and expensive) roster of
trademarked names, Mr. Lucas, Yoda perhaps the best indicator of our collective miserable backsliding
is!
After me repeat: WARS NOT MAKE ONE GREAT.
But as relentlessly keen you're out to point, Star Wars your story is, not ours. Yet even the feebler and
lazier aspects of shared dreams better than no dreams at all are. Disappointed am I at the prequels’
determined onslaught of style over substance, but chuffed am I, as well, that with Sith a serviceable and
often genuinely engrossing bridge between dreaming generations built you have. Mr. Lucas, a devil you
after all may be, but a fascinating and valuable devil indeed. As your relative peer (less $3 billion and
mind-control over most of the world), generally proud of you and your bursts of creative ecstasy am I.
Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith
Entertainment Value: 9/13
Style: 11/13
Philosophical Insight: 8/13
- Gregory Weinkauf, 18 May, 2005
A Master Pundit throws down for Star Wars.
WRITTEN, PRODUCED, DIRECTED AND EDITED
BY GREGORY WEINKAUF
George Dear,
Met we have, in 1999, briefly albeit. Scan you I did, in the Academy Theatre during a USC gala, not for
midichlorian count to test you, but for your corporeal composition to determine: Of binary code or alien
latex were you? Thankfully, no -- a human, Mr. Lucas, ostensibly you are. Perchance a devil, but
probably just a human. Relieved I was, for your movie Star Wars: Episode I -- The Phantom Menace
worried had me. Assured be you, okay I liked it, at the Chinese on opening night at midnight -- and the
first prequel have I revisited, happily, many times, along with its counterpart, Star Wars Episode II --
Attack of the Clones. Coming from this Elder and Master among your Franchise Faithful, a significant
point this is! Derision for my appreciation have I reaped! Stalwart with much effort remained I have! And
yet...clouded your vision has been. Glorious visual spectacle via your droid armies and twisted enabler
Darth McCallum indeed imparted you have, but to the heart of storytelling what price incurred this has?
Not among the throngs of hasty media snappers count me may you (lame Ewok jokes find here you will
not), for, at present, two full weeks of contemplation have I afforded your new marketing juggernaut,
Star Wars: Episode III -- Revenge of the Sith. To an era an end it marks, for you and your minions,
yes, but for me also. In 1977, your first Star Wars movie with a child’s heavy sense of obligation I
attended (on television on Saturday better and free entertainments were there not?), and Sith likewise I
attended. Less a fan was I starting out this final time, taking my seat among preview peers and punks,
than a generous supporter...of what, together here consider we shall.
Sith, of course, not a movie truly is. Incoherent on its own it quavers! Mad! Dangerous, even! Of Pop
Tarts, pencil cases and plastic Padmés is your Empire built; without them the younglings (Jesus...
younglings...okay, back into character) would not to their very dreams your ass-silly trademarked
names take! But a good cog Sith is in its fabulously enjoyable machine (a machine which, like the
Second Death Star, after the failures of Hollywood’s heinous “entertainment” machine was modelled),
and on its own indeed full of sound and fury Sith is, signifying something -- but enough?...not quite.
(Whether or not the tale by an idiot is told, my place to decree it is not.)
In beleaguered popular culture, the path to the Dark Side with narrative non-sequiturs is strewn! (Than
your own countless imitators no further look.) With all due respect: Balance you lack! Do you not feel
The Force guiding you? To become a filmmaker takes the deepest commitment, the most serious mind.
You are reckless! Concentrate! What of this new fascinating-looking yet easily-defeated villain, General
Grievous? (On innumerable stupid names get me started not!) Shades of the woefully-dispatched Darth
Maul he summons! A waste it is! Of which speaking: Where are the Wookiees to us you promised? A
couple of routine Chewbacca shots and those few seconds of blurry battle-fur? Whale Rider among
Gungans? No David Prowse in Vader suit? What of arbitrary “sinkhole planets” and “lava planets” and
“pretty-lake-in-Italy planets” and the-hell-whatever-else planets? (A single celestial body boasting at
least two distinct climatic or topographical regions your weird little galaxy hosts not?) What of the terrible
crime of to us delivering Cinematic Legend Christopher Lee (thrilling cohort of your other auxiliary
baddie, Peter Cushing), and then from us swiftly snatching him away? (To you and your fellow lava-geek
Jackson Peter, belatedly I exhort: No mere expendable henchman is Lee! From decades of geekery
learned nothing have you? Well, at least his character’s execution deign to allow into your big-screen
theatrical version you did. For that kudos.) Moreover, what of all these totally ass-wimpy Jedi? No
prescience of this doom-bringing “Order 66” among their own bone-headed clone troops have they?
Trained for millennia for naught, have they? Shocked at the loosey-gooseyness I am! Hesitate to strike
a known Sith at point-blank range does erstwhile merciless Master Windu?? Languidly expire of
some brief, vague pre-natal “depression” does spunky Senator Amidala??? Pussy-out totally at
the end does the greatest Jedi of them all???? Hell what the?????
Way-neato Sith is, but its screenplay’s logic I understand not.
Which to the spectacle brings us. Bravo. Too nauseatingly digital your scenarios are -- remember:
already a world of endless wonders your human audiences inhabit! -- however, magnificent in its chosen
medium your team’s work is. Again, bravo. From the punchy opening space battle (alas, without the
nerd-voiced Super Battle Droids and bouncy-ball R2-D2 antics done I could have) to the racing
challenge of wingding-y Wheel Bike™ against belching Boga™, stimulated and delighted I was. Planet
“Mustafar” a typically stupid name has (near to planet "Saddamo," it is?), but even in its total absurdity
(and cringingly salient lava’n’bathos Rings-envy; just as with Ridley Scott-envy Episode II gushed, for
better and worse), this über-extreme “Battle of the Heroes” sensational is!
Here special mention of the Truest Heroes of the Star Wars franchise be made must: Of Super
Composer John Williams, who with Phantom Menace in my opinion peaked (“Duel of the Fates,”
fortunately, reprised here over explosive Yoda battling nasty Sidious is); Of Master Editor and Sound
God (and Director) Ben Burtt, who through thick and thin attended his ambition-mad peer to tight and
lavish montages into our wide orbs present, to sonic dreamscapes upon our tickled cochleae bestow; Of
Superior Director Terry Gilliam, who to you allegedly the notion donated of insidiousness not merely
bombastic being (à la Vader) but behind a winsome, bureaucratic smile lurking (à la Michael Palin in
Brazil; 20th-anniversary happy); And of Semi-Exiled Producer Gary Kurtz, in his own right a storytelling
genius, who -- despite among the beardie-weirdies the weirdiest beardie boasting -- to the real, original,
non-“Special-Edition”-up-fucked Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back their respective brilliant,
timeless-classic liftoffs afforded, and dead in Jedi Han Solo he would have had, had the dramatic
narrative its own inherent ass-silliness according to his aborted plan resisted. Unhappily have also I heard
that young Solo in Sith’s early drafts you axed. To goofy schmaltz in ‘83 leave him you did, and to us
today the character you deny when want him we do? (Well oh.)
Of which speaking, the human performers in Sith for the most part the gleeful comradeship, harrowing
heroism and delicious interstellar bickering of The Original Trilogy lack. Real get! Not merely luminous
beings but crude matter are we! High like all your other rich-asshole Baby Boomer peers have you been!
Sad this is, that knew you not the significance of having another saucy JAP in all three movies on board,
and to mere preening and posturing left the outrageously willing Natalie Portman-Hershlag! (Though with
one wrenching sob get me she actually did.) Here in Sith, Portman-Hershlag, plus your celebrated “bad
boy” (read: “Hollywood Whore In Severe ‘Alternative’ Denial”) Ewan McGregor, and pouty kid
Hayden Christensen actually fine work do, but in spite of your machinations and hilariously flat
exposition this is, not because of them! Also, may they the trio of actors be with the most facial moles in
cinematic history sporting? The Mole People! (Though of course Photoshopping-out that squishy
forehead doozie McGregor’s specialty is.) Incidentally, Chosen One and others considered, why all the
lead trio in The Original Trilogy Americans were, and yet here -- represented by Scot and Israeli and
lucky-duck Canuck (“Can I learn aboot The Foorce tomooroh, eh?”), you’ve to far, far away our
national treasure taken? For Hamill and Fisher and Ford and Williams cheered we! Actors and sound
stages and designers and crews in mostly-otherwise-ruined America still have we not?
Of course, Mr. Lucas, despite your remarkable revelations (most closely yourself to heroic robot R2-D2
likening and of your whole epic offering, “It’s ultimately R2’s story”), believe I not that of your franchise
the main character a squeaky garbage pail-shaped robot is. Not either faggy "Goldenrod." Nor The
Mole Brigade. Nay, in Sith, most knowing you seem of Ian McDiarmid’s character (from Senator to
Chancellor to Emperor Palpatine, notwithstanding yet another stupid name which like dismayingly lumpy
hot cereal sounds) whose terrible creepiness to the fore here in bravura fashion comes. Disturbing and
eerily gay-unfriendly his Wacko Jacko-like seduction of Little Orphan Annie Skywalker is! And yet, by
the point the conclusion of Episode VI you reach (Kurtzless, alas), buy your "reconciliation" of Vader
firmly do I not! Stand trial for countless murders his smug, luminous apparition should (of the actor
playing him in which "Edition" regardless). Mythic wonder this choice is not; cheap, lazy "feel-good"
storytelling this choice is.
Mr. Lucas -- despite “Sith” a very convenient anagram for another foul entity being -- your latest (and in
this franchise last?) work I nonetheless curiously enjoy. A ruthlessly downbeat Summer Blockbuster and
trilogy-capper: the first of its kind could it be? Despite seeming into a David Bowie-like stupor of
schmoozing and copycatting lesser contemporary artists to occasionally tumble, a pioneer still you are?
Hope so, I do! Truly disturbing and tragic the giddy-romance-to-mechanized-doom of poor, paternally-
bereft Anakin is! (The Padmé-death dream shots, too, nicely ‘70s-cheapo are.) An astonishingly
effective ending Sith has! For delivering the best heavy-handed populist entertainment of this or possibly
any other year, applaud you I do!
And yet...awry something is. Entirely your fault it is not. A-changin', the times are. The Original Trilogy
with the first blush of the pop-music (not cinematic) New Wave coincided. Fun we had! Thrills we
experienced! Mynocks we hunted! Wampae we escaped! Semi-metaphysical wonders we pondered
(over and over again Alec Guinness de Cuffe’s calm mortal departure and wondrous spiritual return we
debated -- not unlike Liam Neeson’s fine work; why from Sith excised was he, the way by?). After The
Shit Decade of the 1990s, however, meaner and less patient our collective sensibility is. Thus, from the
uplift of heroism to massive global tragedy our attention turns. Fantasy such as yours no more healthy,
brief storytelling escapism affords us but our mostly-hideous world -- wannabe-tyrant in office! --
reflect directly back to us it does!
Even Yoda, his name (like Qui-Gon’s) a trite bastardization of spiritual-physical refinement, changed for
the grim has. Throughout the prequels scowl incessantly he does! And croak as if Frank Oznowicz ten
packs a day been smoking has! Scowl and mope and grimace and bring everybody down this Prequel
Yoda does! Not the wise-yet-wry Yoda with whom initially became we enamoured is he! (If only
continued living Jim Henson had.) As but one element of your expansive (and expensive) roster of
trademarked names, Mr. Lucas, Yoda perhaps the best indicator of our collective miserable backsliding
is!
After me repeat: WARS NOT MAKE ONE GREAT.
But as relentlessly keen you're out to point, Star Wars your story is, not ours. Yet even the feebler and
lazier aspects of shared dreams better than no dreams at all are. Disappointed am I at the prequels’
determined onslaught of style over substance, but chuffed am I, as well, that with Sith a serviceable and
often genuinely engrossing bridge between dreaming generations built you have. Mr. Lucas, a devil you
after all may be, but a fascinating and valuable devil indeed. As your relative peer (less $3 billion and
mind-control over most of the world), generally proud of you and your bursts of creative ecstasy am I.
Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith
Entertainment Value: 9/13
Style: 11/13
Philosophical Insight: 8/13
- Gregory Weinkauf, 18 May, 2005
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