Couples Retreat (2009)

You Definitely Don’t Pull a Hypothetical Gun on Your Therapist

I’ve had today’s movie sitting on my desk for a little while now, ever since it arrived from Netflix.  When it came out in theaters, I knew that I liked all the people that were in the movie, but found that I never had any interest in watching it.  The thing that probably drew me in finally was the fact that there were a lot of really good looking women in bikinis throughout this movie, and also a pretty solid potential for comedy.  This movie is Couples Retreat, written by Jon Favreau, Vince Vaughn, and Dana Fox, directed by Peter Billingsley, and starring Vince Vaughn, Malin Akerman, Jason Bateman, Kristen Bell, Jon Favreau, Kristin Davis, Faizon Love, Kali Hawk, Tasha Smith, Jean Reno, Peter Serafinowicz, Carlos Ponce, Temuera Morrison, John Michael Higgins, Ken Jeong, Amy Hill, and Karen Shenaz David.  I had no idea that a person from both Scorpion King 2 and Scorpion King 3 were in this movie when I started watching it.  That’s just happy coincidence.

Jason (Jason Bateman) and his wife Cynthia (Kristen Bell) are having marriage troubles, so they decide that they should go to a resort to work on them.  But they’re also having financial troubles, so they need their friends to go with them in order to get a package discount.  Dave (Vince Vaughn) and Ronnie (Malin Akerman), Joey (Jon Favreau) and Lucy (Kristin Davis), and Shane (Faizon Love) and Trudy (Kali Hawk) all begrudgingly agree to accompany them.  Dave and Ronnie have a stable marriage with kids, so they don’t believe they need a couples retreat.  Joey and Lucy’s relationship is on the rocks, but they prefer to just cheat on each other a lot instead of working it out.  Shane and Trudy have only just started dating.  But they all go anyways, thinking that Jason and Cynthia will go through the counseling while they can just enjoy their vacation.  When they arrive at Eden, the resort host Sctanley (Peter Serafinowicz) informs them that they must all go through the counseling or they must all leave the resort.  The group must now endure the resort owner, Marcel (Jean Reno), and his unorthodox methods, the amorous Yoga instructor Salvador (Carlos Ponce), and the temptations of the sister island, Eden East, and their wild singles parties.  But they’ll probably all end up better in the end.

Some of the expectations that I had going into this movie were let down.  I knew there would be good looking ladies in bikinis, and the movie delivers on that exquisitely.  There is scarcely a woman in this movie that is not ridiculously good looking and usually wearing a bikini.  The other expectation I had of the movie (given the cast) was that it would be really funny.  It wasn’t.  It had it’s moments, to be sure, but I wanted a lot more laughter than I got.  The introduction to Salvador is a super awkward and sometimes funny scene, as almost every Yoga pose he teaches involves laying on a member of the cast in a sexual manner, whether it’s the girls or the boys.  But there were a couple of funny moments.  The rest of the time it was roughly what you come to expect of a Vince Vaughn movie.  It just seems like the writers just put down a rough outline of what was going to happen and just went to those locations and talked nonstop until they felt they had enough comedy to fill a movie.  A lot of the cast inspires confidence that this will be a good philosophy, but the random things they were saying only got smirks out of me, with the occasional funny one.  This movie also does something that too many comedies feel like they have to do: try to have a meaning.  Obviously it’s all about couples retreats and stuff like that, but don’t lay this message on us about marriage.  It gets a little too heavy handed and sappy for my taste.  This movie had potential to be a good, ridiculous comedy.  I understand that the status quo is to have a little bit of a message behind the movie, but if you lay it on too thick it just bogs down the funniness.  They also seem to have reached a point at the end of the movie where they furiously try to tie up all the loose ends of the movie about 5 minutes before it ends, all within a 10 minute span.  The relationship problems were mostly just hinted at up until that point, then they all instantly reach a boiling point, but then fix it almost immediately.  Another sign that the story of the movie was only vaguely touched upon.  And what was with all the Guitar Hero talk in this movie?  I like Guitar Hero just fine, and I also understand the purpose of SOME product placement in a movie, but they talk about this thing all the time.  Vaughn’s job is to sell the game and, coincidentally, it becomes a strange and unnecessary plot point near the end of the movie.  The thing that the movie does fantastically is the look.  And not just the smoking hot women in bikinis … and I’m sure there are men that ladies would like to look at.  I mean the settings.  It’s probably pretty easy to make a beautiful looking movie in a tropical island setting, but every bit of this movie is colorful and vibrant once they reach the island.  So, if nothing else, you’ll enjoy looking at it.  A great movie on mute, perhaps.

I perhaps went into this movie expecting too much, but it was mainly based on the cast.  I like Vince Vaughn in a lot of his movies, but he does tend to play the same exact character in almost all of them.  Sometimes they work, and sometimes they’re just annoying.  In this movie, I had no problems with him, but he never really did anything funny either.  Just a couple of sparse moments.  The same thing could be said for Jason Bateman too.  He usually plays a completely different kind of character from Vaughn, but it’s usually a pretty neurotic guy.  He’s that here too.  And also has a few moments that were funny.  The biggest problem I had with these couples was with Jon Favreau and Kristin Davis.  I don’t know if I missed some explanation in the beginning of this movie, but I never had any idea how these two were still a couple.  They seemed to mainly just resent and avoid each other, and both of them just kept trying to fuck anybody but their spouse.  Then, at the very end of the movie, they fall in love with each other again because he invites her to Applebees.  …Alright.  I guess that’s a thing.  The only thing I can really say about Kristen Bell, Malin Akerman, Kristin Davis, and Kali Hawk was that they are gorgeous.  Kristen Bell has a decent bit of acting around the end of the movie.  It took me a little bit to figure out where I knew Peter Serafinowicz from, but when I realized he was in Shaun of the Dead, I got really excited.  His character, Sctanley, probably had the largest amount of funny moments, but he wasn’t around enough to fix the movie.  I also felt like John Michael Higgins and Ken Jeong – two more people I generally expect a great deal of funny from – were greatly underused.  And remember when I reviewed all the Scorpion King movies?  Karen Shenaz David (from Scorpion King 2) and Temuera Morrison (from Scorpion King 3) were in this one too.  What a strange coincidence.  But they also had very minor parts here, so there’s nothing more to say.

I think it is probably a dangerous thing to throw a large amount of big names into a mediocre comedy.  We’ll just go in expecting too much.  This movie has it’s charms, but it should have been much funnier with the cast that it includes.  I wouldn’t think anyone would actually hate this movie, though.  The movie is a gorgeous thing to behold because of it’s tropical setting, vibrant colors, and – last but not least – gorgeous ladies in bikinis.  You just won’t laugh that much.  Couples Retreat gets “You got a pose called Yoga guy gets his ass kicked?” out of “Holy shit!  It’s like a screensaver!”

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The Scorpion King 3: Battle for Redemption (2012)

I Will Rise Again, Like a Bad Idea

I’m extremely apprehensive going into this movie.  Generally speaking, sequels that get worse do so exponentially as the movies go along.  The Scorpion King was solid, number two was awful, so what could number three possibly be?  It doesn’t really matter, does it?  It’s been requested!  Eric wanted this movie reviewed, so I’m gonna do it!  Today’s movie has some big names in it, but ones that I have seen both in great movies and in complete shit.  It also has a WWE wrestler and a MMA fighter in it.  Now I’m nervous again.  Today’s movie is The Scorpion King 3: Battle for Redemption, written by Brendan Cowles, Shane Kuhn, and Randall McCormick, directed by Roel Reine, and starring Victor Webster, Bostin Christopher, Billy Zane, Krystal Vee, Ron Perlman, Temuera Morrison, Selina Lo, Dave Batista, and Kevin “Kimbo Slice” Ferguson.

Mathayus (Victor Webster) is having a hard time dealing with the death of his wife, Cassandra (Kelly Hu), and also dealing with being played by three different people.  He gets through his days as a mercenary now.  Egypt is now divided into three kingdoms, ruled by Horus (Ron Perlman), Talus (Billy Zane), and Ramusan (Temuera Morrison).  Talus is looking to steal the Book of the Dead from Ramusan, and Horus wants to stop him from doing that.  Horus hires Mathayus and sticks him with a fat guy named Olaf (Bostin Christopher), just in case there was ever a time when people weren’t saying things.  They get to Ramusan and manage to stop a raid from Talus.  As payment, Ramusan offers Mathayus his daughter, Silda (Krystal Vee), to marry, but Mathayus must first rescue her.  In an attempt to rescue her, they are beaten to the punch by some ninja looking dudes that take Silda to the camp of Rebel leader, Cobra.  But they soon find that Cobra is actually just Silda, and she enlists their help in stopping Talus.  Meanwhile, Talus takes over Ramusan’s palace and retrieves the Book of the Dead, using it to summon three ghost warriors, Tsukai (Selina Lo), Agromael (Dave Batista), and Zulu Kondo (Kevin “Kimbo Slice” Ferguson).  Mathayus, Olaf, and Silda must work together to overcome Talus, his army, and his three mystical warriors to stop his campaign to rule all of Egypt.

Your plan backfired, Eric!  This movie wasn’t that bad.  Should you watch it?  Nah.  But after watching SK2, this one was actually a step up.  But, since I only watched SK2 in order to watch this movie, I guess you still did your damage.  The story of this movie is slightly worse than The Scorpion King, but it’s hindered a little bit by lack of fun.  In this movie’s case, it’s kind of intentional.  Mathayus is so mopey for the first 2/3 of the movie because of his loss of Cassandra and his kingdom that he’s got no time to be fun.  Around the end of the movie, it gets slightly more fun.  There are, of course, lots of things done in the writing that make no sense.  At one point, Mathayus and Olaf wake up to find out they are completely surrounded by tigers.  Their solution?  Walk away.  This could have been something cool.  Hell, it could have been SOMETHING.  Instead, it just served no purpose whatsoever in the movie.  The dialogue, on the other hand, is probably the worst that’s it’s been in this series so far.  Some of the regular exposition is fine, but their little “witty comments” are almost all loses.  When Mathayus and Olaf get robbed in the beginning and are beating up the robbers, he actually throws out “Crime doesn’t pay.”  When one of them falls in the fire and is running while on fire, he says “I’ll take mine rare.”  When sparring with Mathayus, Silda kicks him in the stomach and says “I take your breath away.”  And finally, when Talus is reaching his inevitable end, he claims “I will rise again, like a bad idea.”  Speaking of bad ideas: all of those lines.  And more, I’m sure.  The look of the film has it’s ups and downs.  For some ups: no shitty CG creatures.  They probably couldn’t afford good CG for this movie and so they didn’t do any.  They had some great settings, some impressive animals in the movie, decent enough fights, and the effects on the three ghost warriors were pretty cool.  They had another nondescript sword, but it was more tolerable because it wasn’t some super fancy mystical sword.  But it was a little tiny and not impressive.  Ladies?  There was also a scene where the ninjas attacked Olaf and Mathayus by jumping out of the water, and that looked pretty cool.  The problem was that they jumped out of the water that Olaf was peeing in a moment before, so dude basically just got piss all over him.  But some parts of the movie were filmed with something that seemed to be a handheld camera.  Handheld camera footage has it’s place, mainly in found footage type movies.  In most other movies, it’s just nauseating.  We’re trying to watch a fight, get a cameraman without Parkinson’s!

The performances are mostly okay in this movie.  Victor Webster wasn’t nearly as fun as The Rock was, but he was pretty good.  He was mostly brooding with a little bit of snark to him now and then, but all in all he was okay.  Krystal Vee was good looking, but delivered dialogue in a very wooden way a couple of times.  Billy Zane never really seemed like he was taking this gig seriously, acting pretty hammed up for most of his time, but he did have some parts where he was pretty good.  But when you pull off someone’s ear and start talking into it, I stop taking you seriously.  Ron Perlman and Temuera Morrison weren’t in the movie very long, but they performed their parts adequately.  Bostin Christopher, however, was in the movie a lot, and really worked on my nerves.  Not only was he a fat white guy that I imagine would get winded swinging a sword, but he also would not shut up.  He just kept talking and talking and not saying anything remotely interesting or necessary.  I know the Scorpion King movies have gotten into the habit of having someone around as “comic relief”, but you also have to make them funny.  Here’s the biggest shock of the movie: Kimbo Slice was actually good.  I don’t get it either!  You can kind of understand it from a WWE person like the Rock because they have to do a lot of talking at the camera, but from a MMA guy?  He had very little dialogue, but he had a great look for his part in the movie and I liked everything he did in the movie.  Add in some fiery red eyes and a flaming hammer and it works.  Speaking of WWE people, I was not impressed with Dave Batista.  From what I’ve seen of him in the WWE, he doesn’t do a lot of talking anyway, and he keeps that up here, but he didn’t work for me.  But he was better than Selina Lo.  She was really good looking, but very stiff in her delivery and I was thrown off by the fact that she would randomly scream in battle, but not when actually fighting people.  You can get by that by muting whenever she’s on screen.  Then it’s all good.

The Scorpion King 3 is far superior to The Scorpion King 2, but sadly both pale in comparison to the first movie.  The story is better, the dialogue is mostly awful, the performances are good enough, but some of the fights are good if you don’t get sick watching the shitty hand camera stuff.  But, even though this movie is better than SK2, you don’t need to watch it.  I don’t know why you would consider it, but you can stop it now.  You’re all set.  The Scorpion King 3: Battle for Redemption gets “I’ll take mine rare” out of “I take your breath away.”

Hey, peeps. Why not rate and comment on this as a favor to good ole Robert, eh? And tell your friends! Let’s make me famous!

Star Wars: Episodes I, II, and III (1999, 2002, and 2005)

Twi’leks are hot!

As requested, I will be reviewing the Star Wars films in two reviews, by their trilogies.  First, the prequel trilogy (Episodes I, II, and III) and next the original trilogy (Episodes IV, V, and VI).  Do I need to display their numbers as Roman numerals?  Probably not.  But I’m gonna.  Before I jump in to my first attempt to do multiple movies in one review, I will warn you that I will be spoiling in this review.  But, on the other hand, if you haven’t seen Star Wars by this point in your life, I hate you.

Episode I – The Phantom Menace.  (1999)

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away there are trade disputes.  The Trade Federation has put a blockade around the planet of Naboo and two Jedi, Qui-Gon Jinn (Liam Neeson) and Obi-Wan Kenobi (Ewan McGregor), are sent in to fix it.  The Viceroy of the Trade Federation gets the order from Darth Sidious to kill the two Jedi.  But the Jedi won’t go down easy.  They fight their way out and stow aboard a ship going to Naboo.  Here they meet the ruination of the Star Wars series, Jar Jar Binks (Ahmed Best).  With him, they go to visit the recently captured Queen of the … Nabooians? … Queen Amidala (Natalie Portman or Keira Knightley, depending on when you see her) and rescue her, taking her to Tatooine.  They meet Anakin Skywalker (Jake Lloyd for the time being), a slave of a flying blue thing named Watto, and make a wager with Watto for Anakin’s freedom and the parts they need to repair their ship.  Commence 15 minutes of pod racing!  They win and leave.  Qui-Gon wants Anakin because, as with most religious type figures, he likes little boys.  No, it’s because he has an unusually high count of midichlorians, little creatures that get you tied in to the Force … and also clean a pool really well.  They head to the capital planet of Coruscant and get Senator Palpatine (Ian McDiarmid) elected Supreme Chancellor of the Senate, a decision that will in no way come back to bite them in the ass.  They go back to Naboo to try to save the planet and the two Jedi get into a fight with Darth Sidious’ apprentice, Darth Maul (Ray Park).  He kills Qui-Gon, Obi-Wan kills him right back.  Then they save Naboo.  Obi-Wan is made a Jedi Knight and takes Anakin on as his apprentice, as per Qui-Gon’s last request.

Episode II – Attack of the Clones.  (2002)

10 years later, same far, far away galaxy, a Separatist movement has been set up against the Republic behind former Jedi, Count Dooku (Christopher Lee).  Amidala (Now a Senator and occasionally Rose Byrne), returns to Coruscant to vote on some junk and someone tries to kill her, instead killing her stand-in.  Obi-Wan and grown up Anakin (Hayden Christensen) are assigned to protect her.  After another assassination attempt, Obi-Wan is goes to Kamino (or as the Mexicans call it, El Kamino) in search of the assassin.  Anakin goes with Amidala back to Naboo to tell her his dissertation about why he hates sand so much.  Hating sand gets this woman moist and they start getting all romantic like.  On Kamino, Obi-Wan finds out that a now dead Jedi had ordered the production of a clone army, all cloned from Jango Fett (Temuera Morrison).  Eventually they fight, but Jango escapes.  Obi-Wan follows him to Geonosis, a planet where they’re creating a droid army.  Then he gets captured.  Back on Naboo, Anakin is having bad dreams about his momma dying so he and Amidala go back to Tatooine.  There, they find that she was sold to a guy who freed and married her, then she was taken by Tusken Raiders.  Anakin goes and finds her, but she’s been tortured nigh to death and dies in his arm.  So he kills all the men, women, and children in the Tusken camp.  Okay, perhaps he overreacted.  They get a message from Obi-Wan and go to save him, but then get captured themselves.  In classic Bond villain style, they are to be executed in an overly complicated way that always works.  They escape and the rest of the Jedi show up.  Then Mace Windu (Samuel L. Jackson, mother fucker!) cuts off Jango Fett’s head.  This makes Baby Boba (Daniel Logan), his son, sad.  In order to make this move on Geonosis, Jar Jar had to go and fuck up things more by giving emergency powers to Palpatine, who passes the use of clone soldiers.  A big battle engages and Obi-Wan, Anakin, and Amidala chase down Dooku.  Dooku soundly beats them both in a lightsaber duel, cutting off one of Anakin’s arms in the process.  Then Yoda (voiced by Frank Oz) comes in and whoops all up on that ass.  Dooku escapes.  At the end, Anakin (with new robo arm) gets married to Amidala in secret.

Episode III – Revenge of the Sith.  (2005)

Obi-Wan and Anakin infiltrate the flagship of General Grievous (voiced by Matthew Wood), commander of the Separatist droid army, to rescue Supreme Chancellor Palpatine.  They again fight Dooku, who promptly knocks out Obi-Wan.  Anakin, on the other hand, cuts off both Dooku’s arms and then executes him, being egged on by Palpatine.  (Did you get the “on the other hand” pun?  You’re welcome)  Back to Coruscant, Anakin meets up with Amidala again and she reveals she’s been knocked up by his Jedi jizz.  Anakin starts having visions of Amidala dying during childbirth and vows he won’t let it happen.  And he especially won’t be the CAUSE of it happening.  Because of his closeness to Palpatine, the Jedi Council tell him to monitor Palpatine.  Anakin has begun to get all emo on the Council because of Palpatine’s manipulation and their denial of his promotion to Jedi Knight.  I hear you, Ani.  Palpatine also gets Anakin’s attention by telling him he’s heard of a dark side of the Force ability to keep people from dying.  Anakin figures out that Palpatine is Darth Sidious, Lord of the Sith.  Obi-Wan is sent after Grievous and kills him.  Mace Windu goes to make sure Palpatine relinquishes his control of the Senate with the death of Grievous and Anakin tells him that Palpatine is the Sith Lord.  Windu orders Anakin to stay behind as he confronts Palpatine, but Anakin is torn because he believes Palpatine is the only one that can save Amidala.  Mace fights Sidious and wins, until Anakin goes and screws it up.  Sidious starts shooting some lightning at Windu, but it’s deflected back at himself, fucking up his face and starting to kill him.  Anakin rashly cuts Windu’s arm off and Sidious shoots Windu out the window.  Sidious then names Anakin his apprentice in the dark side, changing his name to Darth Vader (probably naming him after those Star Wars movies).  Then Sidious sends Vader out to kill all the children in the Jedi Temple, and then go to Mustafar to kill the Separatist leaders.  Obi-Wan finds out what Anakin has done and informs Amidala, but she won’t tell him where Anakin’s gone.  But he stows away on her ship as she goes to confront him.  Feeling he’s been betrayed by Amidala because she brought Obi-Wan there, he Force chokes her into passing out, then Obi-Wan and Anakin get into one hell of a lightsaber battle.  Yoda tries to stop Palpatine by attacking him directly, but is unable to defeat him and must escape.  Obi-Wan has better luck and cuts off Anakin’s legs as Anakin tries to attack from an inferior position.  Then Obi-Wan collects Amidala and leaves Anakin burning up by a lake of lava.  Amidala does die during childbirth, but the twins (Luke and Leia) live.  Who knows if those kids will ever make something of themselves, coming from a broken home as they do.  Darth Sidious rescues Vader from near death and turns him all robotic, telling him of Amidala’s demise.  He yells “no”.  Leia is given to a Senator from Alderaan to raise, and Luke is taken back to Tatooine to be raised by his step-family, Owen and Beru, under the watchful eye of Obi-Wan.  The rest of the Jedi are spread throughout the galaxy, waiting for their moment to return.

WOW!  That’s a gundamn lot of writing, and I haven’t even started reviewing!  Oh well, here we go.

The Phantom Menace is, almost inarguably, the worst movie of the 6.  It looks pretty as hell, especially when they’re on Naboo, but almost everything else about this movie doesn’t work.  Liam Neeson, Ewan McGregor, and Natalie Portman all perform well.  Jake Lloyd got on my nerves a little, but most of that was probably the dialogue (“Are you an angel?”)  Also, this kid was basically Jedi Jesus, as it’s revealed that he was immaculately conceived.  Of course, everyone knows that Jar Jar Binks was horribly annoying in every way.  Conversely, Ray Park as Darth Maul was a total metal badass.  Too bad he only got to be in one movie.  The basic premise of the movie starts off poorly too because it’s about trade disputes.  How do you make a trade dispute interesting?  Jedi!  And then it’s still not that interesting.  All the little skinny droids, which are the main soldiers in the movie, are completely useless, almost as much so as Storm Troopers.  The pod racing was a horrible position to be in during this movie.  It took 15 minutes and was really boring.  It was like watching intergalactic Nascar.  Hell, even Jabba the Hutt fell asleep during it.  The dialogue was pretty bad in parts of this movie.  Also, it made me think that George Lucas has the sense of humor of a 5 year old.  At one point, Jar Jar steps in poodoo and, at another point, a creature farts.  This is supposed to be humor.  This one was not a horrible movie, but it was a let down for the movie that brings back the Star Wars saga after so many years of waiting.

Attack of the Clones comes next and gives Jar Jar the backseat.  He passes on his crown of “Most annoying thing in Star Wars” to Hayden Christensen.  This kid was trying throughout the entire movie to act his way out of a paper bag, but remained in it until the very end of the next movie.  Ewan McGregor gets better in this movie and also shows the audience that Obi-Wan’s favorite pastime is cutting off people’s hands in bars.  Natalie Portman does the best she can do with the shitty romantic dialogue that Lucas wrote for her, but also makes us think she’s retarded by leaving the STUPIDEST THING SHE KNOWS IN CHARGE OF HER PLANET!  How you gonna make Jar Jar a senator?!  It’s because of him that everything bad in the Star Wars series happens.  On the other hand, we wouldn’t have the original trilogy without his actions.  I also think it’s strange that I can’t get myself a girlfriend but a smokin’ hot biddy like Natalie Portman will get busy with a guy that just indiscriminately killed men, women, and children.  Not a horrible movie again, and it’s on it’s way towards getting better.

Revenge of the Sith elevates the prequel trilogies from the abyss it would have been in if the third had been on par with one of the others.  It seems to have to stuff a lot into the amount of time it has because it has to tie up all the loose ends and get us ready for A New Hope.  In the beginning of this, beloved robot R2D2 reminds us why we all love him so as he takes on a giant robot trooper as he’s surrounded by others.  R2D2’s like a honey badger!  He just don’t give a fuck!  You little badass you.  Anyways, Hayden is back and as bad as ever.  In this movie, credulity is stretched as Anakin starts getting more and more obviously dark side-leaning.  He starts wearing clothes as emo as he’s acting; getting all black and dark and morose.  And, again, why the hell couldn’t Lucas get someone from a famous romance movie or something to come in and write his romantic dialogue for him?  The rest of the dialogue ranges from fine to awesome, but when someone is falling in love, it’s all “You’re beautiful” “That’s because I’m in love” “No, it is because I am the one who is in love … with you!”  As for examples of the other dialogue, the way Palpatine manipulates others (throughout all of the movies, but especially here) is sublime.  I was fixing to join the dark side if he kept going.  The end of the movie is where everything is at it’s best.  Ewan McGregor is awesome as he’s just defeated Anakin and you can watch his heart break as he has to defeat someone he’s so close to for the evil he’s committed.  Hayden is at his best when he shuts the fuck up and kills younglings and Separatists.  And the climax of the movie is everything you hoped it would be.  Big ass battle between Obi-Wan and Anakin in a place that looks like Hell itself.  Yoda and Sidious throwing down in the giant Council chambers.  The birth of Luke and Leia and the birth of Darth Vader as we know him.  Then they kinda screw it up with Vader’s “NOOOOOOOoooooooooo!”  But it’s not that bad, just a little goofy.

So that’s it.  The longest review I’ve done (until possibly tomorrow).  Altogether these movies are of course the weakest of the saga, but it’s so hard to surpass the original trilogy’s glory for me.  The awesome thing about these movies being first in the chronology of the series but last in real-time chronology is that this series gets to steadily increase in awesomeness, unlike most movies that get worse and worse as they go on.  None of us will remember it that way, but when my blu-rays are passed down to my children and their children, they’ll think that’s the order they came out in and all will be right in the world.  The first two could be skipped, but to use them as a build up to the pretty epic conclusion of the third is worth the time.  The Star Wars prequel trilogy gets a “You were supposed to be the Chosen One!” out of “I hate sand”.

And, as always, please rate, comment, and/or like this post and others.  It may help me get better.