Tomorrow
Star Wars finally comes to Blu-ray in three editions: The Original Trilogy, The Prequel Trilogy, and The Complete Saga. Good news for
Star Wars fans, right? If you’re a
Star Wars fan, though, you may already know—or, if you didn’t know, you might have guessed—that George Lucas wouldn’t be content to release the same old twice-retweaked versions of the films released on DVD in 2004.
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12 reasons why
Deathly Hallows: Part 1 is no
Empire Strikes Back … or even
The Two Towers.
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Star Wars is pop mythology — a "McMyth," as a recent critical article put it — but in our McCulture even a McMyth can be vastly preferable to no myth at all, and certainly to other, less wholesome mythologies (e.g., the
Matrix trilogy). Even for those who generally prefer more traditional fare, there is still much to enjoy and appreciate in these half-baked, stunningly mounted fantasies of good and evil in a galaxy far, far away.
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B- |
**½ |
+2|
Teens & Up
It doesn’t help that this is now the second
Star Wars movie in a row in which the "wars" alluded to in the series title are still basically in the future (one climactic skirmish aside). Lucas should never have gotten bogged down in political debate, let alone given two whole films of it.
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B- |
**½ |
+1-1|
Kids & Up*
It’s not just that the banter and camaraderie of Luke and Han and Leia was so much more fun than the often wearying interactions of Anakin and Amidala and young Obi-Wan — though that’s part of it. More importantly, the stories themselves largely lack the strong center of good versus evil that was the heart of the original trilogy.
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B+ |
*** |
+1-1|
Teens & Up
Crippled as he is by the decisions of the first two films, Lucas still manages to invest the final chapter of his sprawling space opera with the grandly operatic spirit of the original trilogy. It’s still cornball, yes, and with all the usual weaknesses. But Episode III at last has heart.
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A- |
***½ |
+1-1|
Kids & Up*
Thematically, where the first
Star Wars movie offered a simple vision of good triumphing over evil, and
The Empire Strikes Back expressed the problem of evil and the necessity of sacrifice,
Return of the Jedi tackles nothing less than resisting temptation, compassion for enemies, and the possibility of redemption for even the most evil.
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A+ |
**** |
+2-2|
Kids & Up*
The Empire Strikes Back is the backbone of the
Star Wars saga. It takes the story and themes of the first film into deeper waters.
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A+ |
**** |
+2-1|
Kids & Up*
An orphaned hero. An imprisoned princess. A wise old hermit. A magic sword. A fearsome dark lord. Such conventions are the stuff of myth and romance — yet, inexplicably, the first Hollywood film to give these mythic archetypes their due was not some Arthurian romance or epic costume drama.
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Moral and spiritual issues raised by the Star Wars
phenomenon range from the problem of where to draw the line on
Star Wars tie-in products all the way to the
theological problems associated with the concept of "the
Force."
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