In defense of REVENGE OF THE SITH--not!

From Atlantic Refugees:

Buddomon: Seems to me that some of you are knocking the series only because it's popular. Others are knocking it because it's been shot in a new medium that they know in their gut in the way of the future - for good or for ill. Others are slamming on it because of the dialogue, yet clamor to relive older films that feature characters speaking in rythmic patterns just short of Shakespeare's iambic pentamiter. Makes no sense to me: it's STAR WARS, for mercy's sake! Do you expect the characters to recite the Bible, or the Declaration of Indepence?! Do you expect them to speak in another language that none of us understand with captions on the bottom of the screen? If Lucas altered the dialogue in those ways, you'd whine about that, too! View the dialogue as a translation of a foreign tongue, if you can, and maybe you'll enjoy it a little more - but I doubt it. I doubt any of you scoffers could enjoy any of the films, except for the ones Lucas didn't direct, because you've already gone into the whole prospect of seeing a STAR WARS film with a negative attitude about George Lucas and his creation.

STAR WARS is the brainchild of George Lucas. It's his playground, and he can modify and adjust the playground equipment any way he wants to. It's his sandbox, people, we just play in it. That is, if we want to. If any of you can do better than he has, then prove it. I look forward to seeing your future efforts, and hope you all reap the same unfair critical responses you have all so generously sown. 

Oh, phooey. I didn't diss Revenge of the Shits because it's popular, or even Star Wars and Jedi and the rest of the crap because it's popular; I dissed em all because I never thought they were any good. The quality of writing and filmmaking between Empire and the rest of that crap is so huge it's like saying, well, I like haute cuisine over sludge fried in motor oil.

Empire, in fact, is what turned me on to Kershner; everything he's done, from Return of the Man Called Horse to Robocop 2 to Eyes of Laura Mars I've tried to see, and there's a consistent thread throughout the films: they've always had the special effects and production design serve the emotions and drama, not the other way around. It's only inEmpire that you see this--not just the popcorn fun of Star Wars (which has the borrowed attraction of Lucas channeling Kurosawa), but a grandeur that's simply breathtaking.

So it's not b.o. envy, it's not that I wanna be a powerful filmmaker like Lucas (speaking for myself, I'd hide under a rock if I ever had a rep like Lucas; it's worse than Kubrick's with regard to actors vs. fx), it's not that this is all Lucas' baby and he has the final say over it (shit, if he wants final say, then he should've kept all the films after Empire to himself). They just stink, is all.