I Survived! and Attack of the Clones

Well Black Friday weekend is finally over and thankfully I have had the last two days to recover! It was very exhausting and I hardly got to see my family and or my girlfriend. Being one of the team leaders, it was very stressful where I work. We had system failures and errors all weekend and of course, a huge crowd. We were able to keep it together and were able to keep most of our customers satisfied and got them out in a decent time. So I survived.

After The Phantom Menace, Star Wars took a turn for the worst and most fans were heavily disappointed. Before the release, fans were hoping for a redemption movie, something that would bring Star Wars back on par. The movie introduced a heavy amount of CGI and implemented a great deal of bad acting. The beginning of the movie begins with Padme Amidala's ship being destroyed and her decoy killed. We are soon introduced to a 10-year older Anakin Skywalker, who has completed his basic Jedi training. Accompanied by Obi-Wan Kenobi, there objective is to keep Queen Amidala safe from whatever enemy is trying to assassinate her. Skywalker and Kenobi catch a bounty hunter in the act of trying to assassinate Queen Amidala. After being shot with some strange tranquilizer by an unknown menace (who we can assume is a relative of legendary Boba Fett), Obi-Wan tracks down an old friend to determine where the dart came from. He tells Kenobi about the planet of Kamino. Anakin and Padme are sent to her home planet of Naboo in order to stay safe and stay out of the reach of any enemies who would want to harm her. Obi-Wan discovers Kamino and is introduced to the clone army that has been established after an old Jedi's orders. The Prime Minister of Kamino explains to Obi-Wan they have an entire army ready to command for the Jedi. Obi-Wan is introduced to the bounty hunter nemesis, Jango Fett, who is the main clone. After a heated battle, Obi-Wan tracks Jango Fett to a desolate planet Genosis. He is soon captured and learns that an older Jedi, Count Dooku has turned to the dark side. Getting a distress message from Obi-Wan, Anakin and Padme go to Genosis to try to rescue him. They are captured as well and are set to be executed alongside Obi-Wan. Hundreds of Jedis show up to save the captured Jedi and queen. This begins the huge battle of Genosis. Anakin and Obi-Wan track down Count Dooku to battle him but fail miserably. Yoda finds them and battles Dooku but he escapes like a coward. The battle and lightsaber duels are very exciting and have you sitting at the end of your seat. The best part of the movie. The end of our movie finishes with Anakin and Padme being married. How sweet.

IMDb gives Attack of the Clones a 6.7/10 and Rotten Tomatoes gives it a 65%. I would personally give it a 7/10. As a child, I really did enjoy the movie because it had some awesome battles and it was the first Star Wars movie I able to see in theaters. Watching it as an adult, I realized there are many flaws to the movie. It is nice to have great technology and to be able to produce movies with CGI but this movie was plagued with too much CGI. Again, the acting just doesn’t justify the movie. It can be sad and awkward at times. There are enjoyable parts spread about the film but it isn’t until the end until it gets pretty decent, but still has a lack of acting in some of the scenes. As some of the scenes have you sitting at the edge of your seat and thoroughly enjoying Star Wars, there are still several that leave you to face palm at their existence. 

The Worst of the Worst: The Phantom Menace

It had been since 1983 since a Star Wars film was released and fans were beginning to get a bit antsy. The fans began getting desperate for a new Star Wars, but frankly, weren’t desperate enough for the franchise to turn into a pile of shit. In 1999, Lucas released a new installment into the Star Wars franchise: Star Wars: Episode I The Phantom Menace. After so much hype and excitement, this movie almost ruined the entire franchise for most fans.  

This movie obviously takes place before our original trilogy. It is the prequel trilogy and begins the story of the Old Republic and the Jedi. The story begins as two Jedi, young Obi-Wan Kenobi and his master Qui-Gon Jinn, are heading into a huge ship manned by a group called the Trade Federation. They are going to speak to the leaders about a treaty I believe. (The story is a little hard to follow, for me anyways.) Well the leaders do not like this and destroy their ship after it has landed and the Jedi are on board. The Federation sends battle droids to kill them but the Jedi, of course, are able to escape and board a ship that is heading down to a planet called Naboo. Naboo is under capture by the Trade Federation in order for Queen Amidala to sign a deal with them. Once the Jedi have landed and escape for the massive droid army, they run into probably the most hated and stupid character of the whole Star Wars universe, Jar Jar Binks. Jar Jar is a funny talking, irritating, annoying alien creature that Lucas decided would be a good character to the story. One of his biggest mistakes, and this guy made several. Jar Jar has been banished from his home of the “Gungans” but is able to be given a ship from his people before he is escorted out. This way, him and the Jedi are able to sneak into Naboo’s capital city. Once they into the city, they all flee with Queen Amidala and her helpers. Trying to flee into space, huge Trade Federation ships shoot at the ship and destroys a one of the ship’s crucial parts in order to fly. The ship has to land down onto the planet of Tattooine. Here the Jedi will find young Anakin Skywalker, who will be a crucial part of the rest of the Star Wars story. The rest of the movie contains taking Skywalker back to the Jedi temple and asking Yoda’s permission for him to be trained. A overall sad battle between a villain named Darth Maul leaving Qui-Gon Jinn dead and Obi-Wan in charge of training young Anakin Skywalker. And of course, the planet of Naboo is saved from the Trade Federation.

IMDb gives The Phantom Menace a 6.5/10 and Rotten Tomatoes gives it a 56%. I would probably give it a 6/10 which I guess is still technically passing. I do enjoy seeing a younger, more fresh feel of Star Wars but I would have liked George Lucas to have done a better job with the movie or even better, have him replaced. He is almost a cancer cell for the Star Wars movies and you can see that in this newer trilogy. The Phantom Menace could have been a great movie, especially with the better technology which helped greatly with the CGI and making everything look so much better. But none of that matters when you create an awful story and introduce stupid, meaningless characters. Including some bad acting and at times, a horrible script, you just create a disappointing movie. Killing of what could have been an awesome villain and only giving him about 20 minutes total of screen time also ruins the cool factor of a movie. Saying all of this, there are still parts of this movie that I did enjoy and I try to filter out some of the stupidity. It still feels like Star Wars which does help so overall, I can still get some enjoyment out of watching this movie. It does give me much hope that Disney totally scrapped all Lucas’ ideas of a new storyline in the upcoming film! Even before the new director, J. J. Abrams came on board. Hopefully The Force Awakens will be our “New Hope!”

Thanks for reading!

Thanksgiving Rambling and Return of the Jedi

So since it is Thanksgiving, I am going to be posting both my posts tonight. That way I can get them out of the way and try to enjoy part of my weekend. I work around 30 hours over Black Friday weekend so I am going to be exhausted. Some break… I really hate the fact that many big retailers are opening up on Thursdays. It is absolutely ridiculous! Go enjoy time with your family and loved ones, don’t be out shopping! Do that on Friday, but not on the holiday. Honestly, I guess I would be okay with stores opening up later at like 9 or 10 P.M. that way employees can have the day to spend with their families and then once everyone is starting to turn in for the night, they would go to work. As bad as it sounds, I almost wish that our stores didn’t do so well on Thanksgiving this year, that way next year, they’ll hopefully push the opening time later or even make it early Friday. We will see…

So I am going to be doing my posts a little out of order and do this one as mediocre persuasive and then on my next post that will be available tonight, I will go full blown persuasive! This post will be about Star Wars: Episode VI Return of the Jedi. Released in 1983, it marks the end of the original trilogy and the Star Wars story, until December when the next film is released. Growing up, I always found this movie interesting but I think George Lucas’ last film in the story was a little weak compared to what it should have been. After being frozen in carbonite, stolen by the bounty hunter Boba Fett and given to Jabba the Hutt, Han Solo’s friends are trying to rescue him. Jabba the Hutt is that strange, big, green worm from the Star Wars films. He speaks in a strange tongue and has his own kingdom full of weird and even singing aliens. Strange is good but some of these things is too strange, especially this annoying like rat looking thing. The make things short and as you would probably figure, Han Solo is rescued and Jabba the Hutt is killed. I won’t spoil the whole thing for you, but I was very disappointed how they killed the villain Boba Fett. He was supposed to be a cool villain but was lamely knocked into a pit where he is presumably dead. Now there is construction of a second Death Star and it hovers a planet called Endor. Endor supplies a shield for the space station that way the Rebels can’t destroy it again. An assault team is assembled with most of the main characters and is sent to Endor to destroy the shield, but on this planet, the team runs into another strange habitant. Little fuzzy bears called Ewoks. Well there Ewoks have some crazy rock throwing and archery skills because these little bears are able to take out armored, Stormtroopers. A bit odd, but whatever, still a pretty good movie. Luke is able to defeat Darth Vader and able to take down the Empire, leaving hope in the galaxy for now…

IMDb gives Return of the Jedi a solid 8.4/10 and Rotten Tomatoes gives it a 79%. Personally, I would give it a 8/10. Overall, I enjoyed the movie and have watched it many time since I was a kid. It’s a pretty good ride and ending to the beloved story, though some of the acting is dull. Some parts Return of the Jedi just don’t make sense, leaving you to wonder if Lucas will continue directing these movies or let someone else take over. The answer is sadly no which we will see in the prequel trilogy. Thankfully in the upcoming film, Episode VII The Force Awakens, we have a new director and hopefully revive many fan’s feelings about Star Wars.