*OFFICIAL THREAD* Media articles, interviews and reviews for Revenge of the Sith. V.2.

All of the reviews we've read so far are good and all, but we still have not seen any of the major newspaper reviews come out yet (NY Times, LA Times, WSJ, USA Today, et al), and the majority of the general populace red those reviews more so than online critics. We'll see what happens to the tomatometer come Wednesday or Thursday.

 

Hi Semblance,

I found the critics on the Rotten Tomatoes full critics list..but now I see they also have a Tomatometer critics list also. So now I'm not sure if these critics are Tomatometer approved or not!

 

If you stop treating Star Wars like the Koran, it?s easy to see The Phantom Menace is a brightly coloured, disposable fun adventure.

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Hoorah! That's the spirit...

It's also good to hear that a lot of critics are liking General Greivous also.

 

I might actually more happy that Portman got rave reviews from Ebert and Roeper than the film itself. She has been the punching bag for bashers and star wars fans too much.

 

Ebert sounds a little like Casey Kasem these days. I wonder if that's the after effects of the thyroid cancer treatment.

 

Yeah, it is a little hard to tell, but I think it means they won't be added to the Tomatometer count, even though their review will still be listed. For example, you can find a number of Scott Chitwood's reviews listed, but I don't think they count on the main indicator that is displayed on the front page.

 

Small heads up guys. Decentfilms.com will have it's review of Episode III up pretty soon, maybe in a day or two, possibly a week. But, the interesting thing is this, on the front page of the website it says that they will have new reviews of Episodes I, II, and III.

Now, their Episode II review was great, insightful, and very thorough. The writer gave it an A+ in his intial review. So, what has Episode III done to have him rewrite reviews for Episodes I and II.

I'll keep an eye out on the site in the coming days...

 

Not sure if anyone is interested in reading this since most of you all will be able to watch it sometime today, but here's a transcript of the entire Ebert/Roeper review for ROTS

Show opens with a scene from the battle of Kashyyk.

Roeper: The most anticipated movie of the year, the decade, the century, finally comes to theaters...I'm Richard Roper

Ebert: And I'm Roger Ebert. Well here it is at last "Star Wars Episode 3 Revenge of the Sith". It opens Wednesday at midnight. This is an early review, after 28 years the Star Wars series concludes with a final shot showing two characters facing a dawn of what we know will be parts 4,5 and 6.

By starting in the middle and returning to the beginning, Lucas loses some suspence since we already know that Anakin Skywalker will become Darth Vader.

But the transition is in a way all the more facinating as we see a younger and a more innocent Anakin (played by Haden Christensen)in love with Padme (played by Natalie Portman).

Their twins will be the future Luke Skywalker and Princess Leia. As the movie opens, Anakin and a young Obi-Wan Kenobi (played by Ewan MacGregor)are flying to the rescue of the kidnapped Chancellor Palpatine.

Palpatine (played by Ian McDermid)has an uneasy relationship with the Jedi Council and tries to shake Anakin's loyalty to the Jedi.

Can Anakin be trusted? Mace Windu, Obi Wan and Yoda have their doubts about this untested young man.

That's Samuel L. Jackson as the powerful Jedi Master Mace Windu and of course Frank Oz as the voice of Yoda.

Finally the hostility surfaces in a duel to the death on a firey volcanic planet.

Revenge of the Sith is filled with action, including a thrilling dogfight, a sensational crash landing, maybe a little more dueling by lightsabers than you really need since since the swordsman are so good it takes forever for anyone to actually get hurt.

The weakness is in the dialogue. It's flat when it should be poetic and exciting. They seem to be working from a limited vocabulary of basic english.

This would be a bigger problem if the characters spoke more but they don't, except for Chancellor Palpatine who is eloquent and snakey as he seduces Anakin over to the Dark Side.

Thumbs Up

ROEPER: Yeah the Chancellor is the real villan in this chapter. Big thumbs up for me Roger. And you're right about the dialogue THAT'S ALWAYS BEEN A WEAKNESS IN THESE MOVIES.

But that's a small part of this saga. I do like the action sequences alot. I think this movie has something that the most recent two had none of and that is it has a heart. It really does. I mean the Natalie Portman character Padme..

EBERT: Yeah

ROEPER: I mean she's playing this as real drama. She's seen the man she loves going to the dark side and it's really breaking her heart and it feels authentic.

EBERT: Yeah, the last third of the movie is stronger thanks to that emotional content. But at the same time I wish that in a way he(Lucas) would have pumped up the dialogue you have people saying things like 'They're worried about you, they think you're under too much stress'. I mean come on.

ROEPER: Yeah. Hey absolutley

EBERT: I mean its just pedestrian clunky dialogue.

ROEPER: Maybe they should have brought someone like David Mamet to punch it up

EBERT: Somebody like Jackson (Samuel L.) is such an eloquent actor and here he is just intoning. THAT'S JUST A WEAKNESS OF THE SERIES.

ROEPER: But of the recent movies this is the best...

EBERT: Yes it is

ROEPER: I actually think it's the best one since Empire Strikes Back. Maybe the third best out of the 6.

EBERT: What this one does, it goes back to the great tradition of Space Opera, and action, and science fiction and gets out of those long dialogue passages that were not only badly written but also endless.

ROEPER: Yeah and as you mentioned of course the suspense isn't all quite there because we know what's going to happen.

EBERT: Yeah we know

ROEPER: But that also gives the scenes alot more resonance.

EBERT: The scene where Anakin turns into Darth V

 

but here's a transcript of the entire Ebert/Roeper review for ROTS

Thanks!

By the way, their "full" review should be on next week's show, but that will air after most of us have already seen the movie.

 

New review from Australia .. the Sunday Times (Perth)

It sounds somewhat similar to the Daily Telegraph (Aust) review but since the link to that article is now inactive, I'll just stick the whole thing in..

The grand finale
Movie Review by GRANT ROLLINGS
15may05

Star Wars: Episode III: Revenge of the Sith (M)
Hayden Christensen, Samuel L. Jackson, Ewan McGregor
Four and a half stars

GEORGE Lucas returns to masterly form with Revenge of the Sith. Many critics felt the Star Wars creator's earlier prequels, The Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones, did not live up to the genius of his original three films.

But Revenge of the Sith does because it has one essential ingredient that they both lacked ? Darth Vader.

Evil and imperious (and still sounding asthmatic), he might look a little dated with his black cloak and mask but there has never been a more effective sci-fi baddie.

It is his story that casts a giant shadow over everything in this final movie. At last we have the explanation of how the previously heroic Jedi Knight Anakin Skywalker turns to the Dark Side and into Vader.

Tying up the cinematic threads of a six-part series is a tough trick but Lucas manages to pull it off. The result is a must-see movie for anyone who has ever enjoyed Star Wars and the characters from Yoda to R2-D2 and C-3PO.

Lucas's epic battle scenes are a fitting climax to the Star Wars story, and the special effects are more out of this world than ever before.

Sith kicks off with Anakin and his Jedi master, Obi-Wan Kenobi (played by Ewan McGregor), going on a rescue mission during the middle of an intergalactic battle.

Early on we are treated to a computer-generated baddie called General Grievous, who can hold four lightsabers at once.

As Anakin, Hayden Christensen's transition to the Dark Side requires one of the most emotional performances in Lucas's epic saga. We see a man torn apart by a choice between love and duty.

Yet it is a strange sensation watching a film where you already know the outcome but are willing the story to reach a different conclusion.

It's a journey into a brutal world dominated by betrayal, duplicity and tragedy. The story is energetic and pacy and the tension never drops.

But, like all great directors, Lucas saves the best until last.

The duel between Anakin and Obi-Wan is the most exhilarating lightsaber fight of them all.

At one point, all the audience sees are two tiny strips of light cutting into each other on a gigantic mast that is slipping into a sea of lava.

Any fan knows how this fight ends, yet it remains captivating as you will Obi-Wan to win.

Inevitably, the complexity of this final piece of the Star Wars legend can be confusing, especially if you are not familiar with what has gone on before ? or in this case afterwards!

Much of the movie is relentlessly dark. There is a lot of death and many of the victims are on the good side.

Young children could have nightmares after seeing Anakin's murderous rage, and Star Wars obsessives will be able to spot some minor inconsistencies in Lucas's plot.

But such niggles are overcome by the thrill of seeing the return of Chewbacca, Darth Vader and Co, and seeing how Star Wars began . . . a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away.

 

Well...this critic-coaster we're riding sure is interesting.

 

I have to say that since Ebert has given his stamp of approval this thread has slowed down a bit.

 

No, we're all a little hung over from last night's Kool-Aid party.

AC2

 

This review won't count on the Tomato Meter, and really should be taken with a grain of salt since it's from a very conservative political publication (hey, I'm a Democrat, I don't care what they think), but many of those Fox News guys are writers and editors for the magazine.


THE WEEKLY STANDARD

Star Wars VI
Naboo, Dooku, and a mission to the Wookiees.
by John Podhoretz
5/14/2005 12:03:00 AM, Volume 010, Issue 34

THE FINAL Star Wars is, as writer-director George Lucas promised, a tragedy--but it's not the tragedy Lucas thinks it is.

Ever since he began making his second set of Star Wars movies a decade ago, Lucas said that Episode III: Revenge of the Sith would be the unvarnished story of the young knight Anakin Skywalker's degeneration and conversion into the black-helmeted, black-outfitted Darth Vader, the villain of the first three films. The tale of woe it really tells is that of George Lucas himself, the final chapter in the sad degeneration of a vital, vivid, and highly amusing moviemaker into a dull, solipsistic, and humorless incompetent.

Lucas had more than a quarter of a century to figure out why Anakin Skywalker went bad. And here's what he came up with: Anakin is afraid of losing his wife Padmé in childbirth. Padmé tries to reassure him: "I promise you I won't die in childbirth," she says, offering a touching expression of her faith in the range of health-care services that were available a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. That over-deliberate line of dialogue is typical of Revenge of the Sith, which joins its immediate predecessor Attack of the Clones on a very short list of films that deserve to compete for the Worst Script Ever Written.

"Hold me, Anakin!" Padmé tells her husband. "Hold me like you did by the lake on Naboo!"

No performer living or dead could pronounce the word "Naboo" without sounding like a moron, and Lucas matches that ...

the rest of this article is available only to subscribers.

http://www.weeklystandard.com/Check.asp?idArticle=5611&r=ajqxt

 

Does Ebert also do reviews for a newpaper? If so, I assume that will be one more positive to go into the RT site.

 

Yes, he's also a "Cream of the Crop" critic. His reviews carry a little more weight than the usual (no pun intended).

AC2

 

Coolio!

 

Both Ebert and Roeper are writer's for the Chicago Sun-Times Newspaper. But only Ebert writes movie reviews for the Sun-Times, Roeper is a columnist who can write about movies, tv, politics, Chicago local issues, he's got free reign.


RottenTomatoes will link to Ebert's Sun-Times review, then for Roeper they'll link the Ebert & Roeper website.

 

Does Ebert also do reviews for a newpaper? If so, I assume that will be one more positive to go into the RT site.

Yep, he's one of the top (if not THE top) critics in the U.S. and he writes for the Chicago Sun-Times...and his reviews do count on the tomatometer.

EDIT: Beaten to the punch once again *shakes fist!*

 

OK, thanks.

 

I assume that will be one more positive to go into the RT site.

Yeah, they will eventually get around to adding it.

 

So positives yet to be posted on RT.

Positives
Roger Ebert
Richard Roeper
Richard Corliss (Time Magazine)
Richard Schickel (Time Magazine...Gave positive mini-review on CNN)

Negatives
Rex Reed (Hasnt reviewed it yet, but freely admits he hates Star Wars)


Also thier are several reviews on RT that are not counted at all when you select All Reviews even though they have scores. Why is that? Talking about reviews from:

Movie-Vault.Com - 8/10
musicOMH.com - Positive
ComingSoon.net - 8/10
DVDFuture - 3.5 stars
InFilm Australia - 4/5
Filmspiegel.de - I believe someone translated this as positive
Radio Sargam - 8/10
Channel 4 Film - Think it is negative

 

Good to hear two thumbs up!

The reviews over here in the UK are going great, all but 2 (guardian/mail) have been positive from what i have read.

Good stuff.

 

the rest of this article is available only to subscribers.

--

Thankgod! I won't be tempted to read the rest of it then...

 

I was reading some of these reviews on another message board and laughed out loud when someone called the Guardian something for the "snooty psuedo-intellectual crowd". I had been searching my mind for the word that described that critic, and when I saw "snooty" I knew that was it.