Star Wars - Episode III

Tina's brother is in town right now and we made him 'volunteer' to babysit the sleeping kids while we went out to see the movie. This was the first movie adventure in Stockholm.

I found that they have a site where you reserve seats. Actual reservations for actual seats. I will bring this concept back to the US, it is long overdue. I read Swedish badly and so couldn't be sure that I had done any of it correctly. There is a seating diagram on the website and I thought I picked something dead center between the speakers. Another strange piece is that I have noticed a certain section of town, about 3 blocks square where there must be 8 movie theatres. I never paid it much attention until I sat down to reserve the tickets. It turns out that each theatre, with only a few exceptions has 1 screen and has only 2 shows per night. I assume that each theatre takes just one movie and shows it twice per night.

The biggest part missing from the online reservation system was a place to pay by card. It might have been there but I could not de-code the Swedish to find it. Just to be sure, we decided to swing by the box office and try to pre-pay before grabbing dinner. Turns out we were at the wrong theatre and asked if we could pay here to watch the movie there. This was potential catastrophe in Sweden, they love their systems and there is often no provision for flexibility. We got lucky that this was already accounted for in the system and paid for our tickets with out resorting to violence.

The theatre lets you in 10 minutes before show time. It was an actual theatre like in the olden times. There was a surround balcony with boxes, a stage and the seats were not sloped, just a big room w/ chairs. Tina was suitably impressed by the surroundings, paintings on the walls, naked nymphs etc. The previews lasted a solid 15-20 minutes and were a combination of commercials (for video games, toothpaste and drunk driving) and previews for movies. 1 of the movie previews was for a Swedish film that featured 6-8 naked breasts and 1 very uncomfortable male frontal nudity scene. The Swedes love their nudity.

The first scene of the actual movie was the video game you would expect with loud sounds and bright lights. I am annoyed about 3 seconds in when they have Ewan McGregor start with the lame one-liners. If not for the painfully lame asides he and the Emperor dude carry the movie. One overall comment about #6 and #1 through #3 is that the big action sequences seem written for CGI instead of the other way around.

The tough part about this movie is the expectation. We know Lucas has to show how Annakin makes the trip to the evil side and we also know he won't do it well. The dialogue is nearly unbearable throughout and all the scenes with Natalie Portman are cringe-y to the extreme. With 2 before it and 3 after it, we know what the big 'surprises' will be. The draw here is to see the 2 turning point scenes. 1 is when Anakin turns and 2 is when Obi-Wan fights him. The second wasn't bad and the first only lasted 2 seconds (you will miss it if you blink). Obi Wan seems to have a real struggle about having to kill his buddy. Its well acted. Annakin blithely decides to become the most evil dude in the world and start killing babies after about .3 seconds of hesitation.

Overall it is the best of the first 3 and if pushed I will put it behind 4 and 5 but ahead of 6. It is of course hard to judge on its own due to its relationship to the other films. It is a good movie that could have been a great movie with better writing.