Episode II

Gareth didn't like Episode II, and I can see why. I was cringing in a fetal position for most of the love-story dialogue - George Lucas has gone on record (fourth paragraph) saying he's not keen on dialogue, but in that case he should get someone in to polish his script and not make the love-story dialogue (and, to some extent, most of the introductory Basil Exposition dialogue) just plain daft. It sounds like you're listening to the dubbed version of a Hong Kong action movie. In many ways Episode II is a better film than, say, Star Wars, arguably the worst member of the original trilogy - overall. But in the same way that Episode I was fairly good - if you missed out Jar Jar Binks, and for those Star Wars fans that hated Jar Jar, yes, he's not in this any much as much, but when he is in it, he's millions times worse - Episode II is pretty good - if you miss out the dialogue. Hell, even Yoda's dialogue is not good enough. His mannerisms are spot-on, he does a lot of that sideways-looking narrowing-eyes wise old Jedi master thing, but, for crying out loud, his dialogue is mostly syntactical. What the hell is going on here? Fundamentally, George Lucas doesn't care about most of the dialogue, and cannot ad-lib Yoda's stuff in the way Frank Oz can, and he should have let someone else do that. Don't get me wrong: this is, in many ways, a better film that Episode I, and not a bad Star Wars film. In a way, when you see the familiar Star Wars logo and opening synopsis trail up the screen, you know you're watching yet another Star Wars film, and I suppose that's true to George Lucas' contention that this is like a hokey '30s pulp film. But it could have been so much better. (In the hands of a director who cared about actors, for instance - none of the actors who are already good are anything other than wooden. Samuel L. Jackson, Ewan MacGregor, Christopher Lee, Ian McDiarmuid are fine - well, you'd expect them to be. Natalie Portman is OK, Hayden Christopher is appalling.) I've thought a fair bit, though, about the nature of the Force, and of the Jedi, and this is giving me a number of useful ideas about Earthsea, which I'm planning to run in the autumn. A couple of extra things. First of all, and even though everyone I know with a livejournal, pretty much, has mentioned this before, well, I'm getting married. The web site I'm linking to says it more than I could say here (i.e. I've thought about the web site more than this post), so go and look at it. Shoo. Secondly, surveys:
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