ep3 preview

I know what you're saying: Two-thirds of the known universe has already watched this movie, so it's a little late for a preview.

Well, having been one of the shunned minority who has not watched it—not even a trailer, not even the article in Time Magazine—I thought I'd give my opinion anyway. Bonus: no spoilers.

Rather than a traditional review that summarizes the plot, critiques the acting, and waxes poetic over the cinematography—none of which I have the foggiest notion of—and rather than a traditional preview which predicts an Oscar based on numerology and a couple Usenet rumors, I'll address a series of questions that we've all asked ourselves over the nearly three-decade course of the Star Wars saga.

How on Hoth is Lucas gonna patch up the plot enough to make Ep3 connect with Ep4?
Lucas calls it a "re-release".

Who's the audience?
There seems to be two schools of thought here: Kindergarten and Junior High. The Kindergarten School points to the floppy digital characters and Roger Rabbit voice acting and sees a grab at the Gen-Barney market segment. The Junior High School points to the swords and guns and milquetoast (there, I used it!) romance and explains the digichars as part of the whole sci-fi feel. My opinion is neither. The target audience is Steven Spielberg, who Lucas wants to be.

What's he saying?
To summarize what we learned in Episodes IV-II: mitochondria are pitting evil, vaguely-Asiatic beings against good Anglo-Saxons and token Brothers. Good must be balanced versus evil, otherwise... otherwise... something worse than evil will happen? There are always at least two of each side. This is so Lucas can avoid the ever-popular megalomaniac monologue. Since one is always the apprentice, the other the master, these monologues occur anyway. The Bad Guys have formed, or are in the process of forming, an evil empire, known as AT&T. Against this is the Good Guys' decadent Republic, superceded by an infinitely more popular web of terrorist cells. These terrorists realize their ultimate victory by blowing up the largest structure in AT&T's empire, twice. Lucas does live in Marin County, after all.

What went wrong?
George Lucas is afraid he just got lucky with his first few movies. Allow me to paraphrase what a wise, old man once told me:

"Fear leads to comic relief. Comic relief leads to digital characters. Digital characters lead to suffering." (sighs and shakes animatronic head)