Carpe Datum

So sad. The preview for Ep1 got me into a froth. This makes me yawn. I don't plan on seeing it in the theater at all, unless reviews come back saying it's better than Empire.

Some friends and I were having a conversation about this and we came to the conclusion that Lucas has lost his marbles (if he ever had any). He had a fabulous concept and did wonderful things with Star Wars but has forgotten that the core of that movie and even the entire trilogy was a great story. (He admitted that he started where he did because it was the most gripping story he had so maybe we shouldn't be surprised.)

Since the middle of Return of the Jedi, he has forgotten why (if he ever knew) people liked his movies. The battle for Endor was a waste of time and footage. It served to provide new markettable doodads, but it didn't serve the story well at all and should have been condensed. (By the 5th time you see the Ewoks being blown up, how much more evidence do you need that the battle is going badly?)

The same goes for everything that has happened since then. Seems he's not being critical of his own work anymore. There are whole scenes which serve no purpose... Can anyone tell me why we needed a pod-race if not to sell a video game? He'd already given us multiple scenes showing us that Anakin was gifted with machines and it didn't do enough regarding his natural piloting ability to make his flying the Naboo Fighter any more believable.

And take Darth Maul... A character who was supposed to follow Darth Vader as a menace... By the time they killed Darth Maul, did anyone honestly *care*? He was on screen for 15 minutes and wasn't even a credible threat to any of the main characters. There are rumors that because we never saw the body he might come back in Episode III to which I still respond, "Who cares?"

Star Wars has become a point of disinterest for me. If anything, I expect a 3-minute synopsis of the movie will suffice to sate my curiosity about the development of the empire and if that can be accomplished without mention of Ewoks or Gungans then so much the better. Worse, it has become a lesson in how *not* to write or edit a movie.