Third Time's the Charm?

It has come to Seattlest's attention that there's some big movie coming out tomorrow. Sigh.

It's not that we're not huge Star Wars fans---the first film we can recall seeing in the theater is Return of the Jedi, and we still have Empire Strikes Back bedsheets, fer chrissakes. It's just hard to get excited for Episode III after having our hearts broken repeatedly by Episodes I and II. Consider us the dog who has been teased one time too many by our cruel master George Lucas: he promises us a big juicy steak, we shell out $9, and get nothing in return but a kick in the ribs and some horribly wooden acting. Once bitten, twice shy, thrice reluctant to get our hopes up at all.

But, we have been promised, this time it really is different. This time the tale is much darker (requiring a PG-13 rating), and there's some epic fight scenes featuring great special effects, and everything culminates in the literal births of Luke and Leia and the figurative birth of Darth Vader. However, even with the relatively good reviews it's been garnering, we still can't help but be pessimistic. What if all those good reviews are merely a product of comparison, that this film can't help but look good next to those two previous piles of flaming horse excrement? After all, Entertainment Weekly, not known for being the harshest of critics, gave it a B-; Peter Travers, who is a sucker for a well-done blockbuster, was less than impressed; and the New Yorker (granted, a high-brow, elitist rag) excoriated the film, and how. Even the positive reviews have major caveats: A. O. Scott of the New York Times gave it high praise---a little bit of Seattlest died when he made the claim that Sith was better than the original Star Wars---but he went on to state that "Mr. Lucas's indifference to two fairly important aspects of moviemaking - acting and writing - is remarkable." Zing!