oh wow oh wow oh wow oh wow oh wow oh wow!

**SPOILER WARNING**Definitely the best Star Wars movie ever!

Soooo tired today. What I was thinking coming to work after seeing the midnight+1min session of Star Wars, I do not know. Now drifting through the day in a haze of happy tiredness.

We got to the cinema kind of late for lining up – around 10pm as opposed to those who’d been there since the morning – but we’d decided on a more obscure cinema and the line wasn’t too long. Of course the drawback was that while Neo was off taking pics at the bigger cinema with Lord Vader and random storm troopers (such a cool pic!), I was in a conservative, costumeless crowd. But it did make life easier for Drummer Girl and her broken ankle. Can’t have a cast and crutches stop you getting your Star Warsie goodness.

The last two movies were wonderful to behold (awesome cities, interesting peoples, amazing CG ~ seeing Yoda fight for the first time was SO COOL! ~ cool battle scenes) but the scripts were lacking and much of the dialogue as corny as a daytime TV soap. It’s an old story that Lucas should stick to being a phenomenal ideas man and leave the script to a more able pen. I still loved the movies ~ come on, it’s STAR WARS ~ but the flaws showed.

Not Episode 3. Revenge of the Sith was so good! It filled in all the spaces of course between 2 & 4 (even small things explained so much, like Yoda’s reference to Obiwan’s training at the end of the movie). So many touches of brilliance in the story and the filmmaking. I thought Lord Grievous’ physical makeup was an important precursor to Vader becoming a biomech. The scene with the children floored me. The one on the shore of the lava pool had me staring wide-eyed. Certain Jedi deaths left me in tears.

I never realised more than in this episode that much of the Star Wars saga ~ the battle between the Empire and the Republic, and the role of the Jedi in that saga ~ are really just a backdrop for the story of Anakin Skywalker and the ‘man’ he became. I think all brilliant epics are told that way. Without the story of one or a few, the story of many becomes generic, meaningless.

Man how I wish that Lucas was making episodes 7-9 as he first planned to. It’s the end of an era that’s spanned a lot of my years. But what an ending!