No spoilers unless you don’t want to know which characters appear in the book. In which case, stop reading now. It focuses primarily on Rand, Egwene, and their respective entourages, though most of the other major characters make appearances. If I were to guess, the next book (Towers of Midnight) will probably focus mainly on Rand and Mat, and maybe Elayne. Katie reminded me that the title is a Seanchan reference, plus there’s another mission — well, quest, really — being built up involving a tower. (Not to mention the White Tower and Black Tower, of course!)

As in Knife of Dreams (and unlike Crossroads of Twilight), things happen in this book! There’s a growing sense of urgency throughout the novel, and everyone who can is pushing hard to have everything in place for the coming apocalypse. For some characters it’s a personal journey. For others it’s political. And for some, it’s simply geographical.

As far as meshing with the rest of the series goes, the only thing that stood out for me was that points of view would switch in the middle of a chapter more often than I expected. It’s not that Robert Jordan never did it, but I remember it being rare outside of the prologues. Brandon Sanderson is more likely to take what would have been two shorter, thematically linked chapters and combine them into one. Katie also noticed one spot early on that one character from Tarabon didn’t speak with the Taraboner dialect — but only the one instance, and one in which the phrasing would have been awkward. It still reads like a Wheel of Time book.

I wish Robert Jordan had been able to finish his epic himself, but it looks like we’re getting the next best thing.

Most shows would take two hours to do all that, or pick and choose to cram it into one. (They even found time for a car chase.)

One of the things that really impressed me was that, just using one episode’s worth of characters, they showed the beginnings of so many totally different ways of looking at humanity’s glimpse of the future, whether through hope, fear, or simply confusion. From what they said at Comic-Con, one of the ideas is to be able to expand this to theoretically anyone in the world.

The extended preview of upcoming episodes (a flash forward to Flashforward!) seemed to be making a great effort to say that yes, they’ll be answering questions, and no, you won’t have to wait 3 years to find out what the heck is going on (unlike that other show with Sonya Walger, Dominic Monaghan, and Oceanic Airlines).

There were a couple of moments that I thought were forced, though the only one that really stands out was the immediate juxtaposition of the “we’re being punished” and “this is a gift” reactions.

Adaptation

They did a good job of taking the source material, Robert J. Sawyer’s novel Flashforward (I’m getting really confused as to whether the TV series has a space in the title or not, but the book definitely doesn’t), and making something that’s recognizably the same idea, but telling a new story with it. It has the benefit of all the thought he put into it:

• What are all the consequences of everyone blacking out for two minutes?
• If everyone experiences his or her own future at the same instant, what about people who are asleep at that time?
• How do you determine whether people are seeing different possible futures or the same future?
• How do you determine whether the future can be changed? (It’s a common enough storytelling trope, but how would you scientifically prove it?)

And so on. But they can tell a larger story, with more characters…and still surprise people who read the book. I don’t know whether they plan on using a similar explanation for what caused the event, or whether the TV version will come down on the side of “The future is not set” or “You can’t fight fate” (though I expect it will be the former, for storytelling reasons). And there was a moment a few minutes before the end that just came out of nowhere and left me thinking, “Wait, what???”

The book is definitely worth reading, especially if you like science fiction of the “what would happen if…?” variety, and it looks like it probably won’t spoil much.

Like most of Sawyer’s stuff, It’s a good, fast read that makes you think. It’s also been in the news lately, since ABC is developing it as a TV series to pick up the Lost audience as that show wraps up, and they’ve been announcing casting for the pilot.

I’ve posted a review of Flashforward at Speed Force.

It was well worth the wait.

The series is set two millennia after humans, led by Virginia Dare (explaining where the lost Roanoke colonists went), overthrew the demonic race that had kept them as slaves for generations. Virginia had discovered how to harness the sedos power, essentially magic. The last of humanity’s oppressors warned them that the sedos would eventually destroy their world. Of course, no one believed him.

2200 years later, this corner of the world is not unlike Europe in the early Renaissance. Except that the church is based on the sedos, in the person of saints, and its priests walk the paths to harness the sedos powers.

The world is also beginning to rot. Things of nature are dying, human alliances are crumbling, and terrible creatures thought to be myth are walking the earth. There are several factions who claim that they want to save it, but their true goals are suspect, and their methods differ greatly. The various viewpoint characters are thrust into the middle of things without any real sense of what’s going on: a holter, a princess, a novice priest, a knight, a swordsman, a composer and a queen.

One of the things I find so fascinating about this series (as I mentioned when I first read The Blood Knight) is the fact that everyone is acting on partial information. This makes them screw up, sometimes mildly, sometimes horrifically. And there’s a curveball that comes about 1/3 of the way into The Born Queen that turns everything on its head.

I don’t think it’ll give too much away to say that one of the key struggles in this book is for control of the sedos. Even 100 pages from the end, I wasn’t sure which faction would give the world a better chance of surviving.

Music also figures importantly, starting with the second book, where it’s learned that certain combinations of sound can have a profound effect on the human psyche. I found myself wondering whether Keyes had someone set any of the songs to music.

By the end of The Born Queen, most of the major questions about what’s really going on have been answered. Of course, they’re answered in pieces, by different characters with different agendas. The major characters’ arcs reach (mostly) satisfying conclusions, with some finding what they want, some finding what they need, some doing what needs to be done, and some getting what they deserve.

It’s weird to finally be done with the series, which started around the same time as this blog. The first post that I made that wasn’t “Hey, look! I have a blog!” was a review of The Waterborn and The Blackgod, Greg Keyes’ first novel and its sequel. In it, I mentioned looking forward to The Briar King when it came out.

The story links the dawn of the Silver Age of comics, and the formation of the Justice League of America, with the dawn of the Space Age, set against the political background of the Red Scare. It focuses most heavily on Green Lantern-to-be Hal Jordan and on the Martian Manhunter, but touches on Superman, Wonder Woman, Batman and the Flash as well.

What Works

Cooke’s drawing style and the 1950s retro look to the artwork both translate well to the screen. The voice talent does a great job as well: At no point did I find myself thinking, “Hey, that’s Lucy Lawless,” or “Funny how Hal sounds just like Angel.” In many cases, I actually had to look up the names of actors whose voices I probably would have recognized if I’d been less involved in following the story.

The first 10-15 minutes are somewhat disjointed, but it soon settles into a solid narrative, and the battle which takes up the final third of the film is quite impressive. On the surface it’s about the new generation of super-heroes banding together to face the apocalyptic threat of “The Centre,” but it’s all really about two things: hope and trust.

Some of my favorite bits from the book are still there: Barry Allen racing across the country to stop Captain Cold in Las Vegas, pausing for a nanosecond to kiss Iris on the cheek before continuing. J’onn J’onnz absorbing American culture by watching TV, transforming into the characters he sees—including Groucho Marx and Bugs Bunny. Wonder Woman explaining how she freed the captive women in an Indochina village, and let them deal with their captors as they saw fit.

What Doesn’t

There are two main places where the movie breaks down:

First, the spaceflight sequence in the middle. There was just way too much wrong with it in a “Physics don’t work that way!” sense. I can buy the secret pre-Apollo launch; that’s a staple of the genre. But it would help if the rocket moved like, well, a rocket. Though I have to admit it didn’t bother me watching it with a huge audience of comic fans. It was only when I watched it again at home (M80 was kind enough to send me a review copy) that it really pulled me out of the action.

Second, the political themes came off a lot clumsier than I remembered. It has been a few years since I’ve read it, so it could simply be rose-colored glasses, but it’s probably just the result of trying to condense a 450-odd-page story down to 75 minutes.

Overall

It’s definitely worth seeing. And it’s convinced me I need to dig through my long boxes and re-read the original. (I also need to fill in the details on my Flash site’s write-up.) There are a number of subplots which fill out the backstory and the main themes which had to get cut for time. (An audience member on Saturday asked about the Challengers of the Unknown. They’re there—but only Ace Morgan gets much screen time.)

If you haven’t read the comics (or, as they’re careful to describe it, the graphic novel), I highly recommend it. It’s available as a single hardcover or as a pair of paperbacks. There’s more on the adaptation at the official website for the movie.

The computer animation managed to avoid the uncanny valley most of the time. The previews at Comic-Con looked very strange, but either the presentation helped immensely, or they’ve been refining it since they put those clips together. Movements are dead-on (it’s all motion-capture) and even facial expressions have gotten really impressive. (There’s a sequence at the end which is entirely two characters looking at each other, and it’s all expressions). And when it did slip into characters not quite looking human, the story was usually engaging enough to keep it from being too distracting.

They clearly had a 3D presentation in mind when blocking out shots, because they took great delight in tossing spears, arrows, and the occasional hapless Dane at the audience.

I found myself comparing it to Lord of the Rings in a few places, which isn’t surprising, since Tolkien was quite familiar with Beowulf. I’m pretty sure the Denmark of this period is the source culture for the Rohirrim, as well (both in the books and in the Peter Jackson films), so it’s appropriate that Heorot gives off a vibe of Edoras gone horribly wrong.

The monsters are impressive. Grendel is about as disgusting as can be, his mother literally radiant, and the dragon is a majestic gold, looking more like raw metal than scales. The designs of Grendel and the dragon are used well to reflect the contrast between Hrothgar and Beowulf: one decadent and slimy, one still heroic even in his old age. The initial attack by Grendel gets confusing pretty quickly, and the later confrontation devolves a bit into virtual wire-fu, but the battle with the dragon is suitably sweeping (though I had a few problems with the dragon’s heart).

I liked that they used Old English in a few places (Grendel’s dialog, and later, the play in which actors recount the tale of Beowulf’s encounter with Grendel), though I’m not familiar enough** with the original to know whether they kept lines verbatim.

Someone at the theater had made a whole bunch of these cardboard shields and set them along the hallway to the IMAX theater.

Edit: I did finally see 300 last month. I liked Beowulf better. I think the main thing is that 300 was positioned as a historical epic, so when it went over the top (”This is SPARTAAAAA!!!!!”) it seemed really over the top, while Beowulf is set in the epic fantasy mode: monsters, giant sea serpents, demons, dragons, etc., and the movie is in part about the nature of heroic tales and how they get embellished over time. So when the hero splits a sea serpent’s neck all the way down with his sword while falling, or boasts that “I am BEOWULF!!!” it fits.

*The theater gives what can only be described as a sales pitch for how great the IMAX presentation is going to be, which is kind of strange since by the time they give it, you’ve already bought your tickets and sat down inside. It reminded me of the Weird Al song, “Frank’s 2000″ TV” (though if my calculations are right, it’s only 1077 inches) and when they started bragging talking about how many thousands of watts of sound they had, we both started giggling.

**I took a class on Old English in college, which focused on vocabulary and shorter works. Unfortunately I didn’t have time to take the second quarter, which was entirely Beowulf. I did eventually pick up a book that presents the original and translation side-by-side, but I have to admit I haven’t gotten around to reading it.

But still, there’s some sort of primal thrill—at least for anyone who grew up as a boy in 1980s America—in seeing giant robots fighting each other. So I finally decided to catch it while it was still in theaters.

It was better constructed than I expected. They had a plausible reason for the Autobots and Decepticons to be on Earth, and they were very good about following up on exposition. Every gun that appeared on the wall was eventually fired, down to Sam’s eBay auctions, with one exception: I really expected them to blow up Hoover Dam.

Which brings me to the biggest gap in logic. SPOILERS follow, for anyone who, like me, has been living in a cave.

They have this Cybertronian artifact that everyone is after. It’s at Hoover Dam. Megatron’s a few rooms away, waking up from cryo. The Decepticons have infiltrated the base, and more are on their way. So they come up with this plan to smuggle the cube out and take it somewhere—I didn’t quite catch where, but I thought I heard something along the lines of “X city is 10 miles away”—and call in air support to get it to a secured location.

Now, Hoover Dam is at the edge of Nevada, in the middle of the desert. Las Vegas and Henderson are fairly close, but you can easily go out in the middle of nowhere.

So why would you instead drive 4-5 hours to Los Angeles? A major population center with millions of people you can endanger? And make your stand in the middle of downtown, in the middle of the day?

And how did the Decepticons manage not to catch up with them during the 3-hour drive through the desert, or the 1-hour drive through the Inland Empire and eastern Los Angeles County?

It only makes sense from a thematic standpoint—the outcome of this battle will determine the fate of humanity, after all, so let’s show them being endangered—or from a visual action standpoint. It’s a lot “cooler” and more intense to show giant robots knocking buildings around than fighting in the middle of the desert, and besides, they did that already in act 1. Strategically, though? Grade-A stupid.

And that leads to the second big gap in logic: the epilogue in which they’re dumping the Decepticon corpses at the bottom of the ocean so that there’s no evidence. What, so the thousands of people who saw them duking it out in downtown LA, not to mention the dozens (or probably hundreds) of deaths, are all going to keep quiet? Video taken on cell phones? Photos? You can bet there would have been news crews on hand, and even if they couldn’t transmit, they would have at least been recording.

Covering up the fact that giant robots were battling each other, special forces units with heavy artillery, and a freaking air force wing, would have been like covering up the fact that airplanes were involved in 9/11.

Well, the effects were good, and I had fun identifying scenery (flying around LA was nice, because the managed to get a really clear day to shoot, and you could actually see clear to Orange County in one shot). Some of the humor was good (I particularly liked zapping the Nokia, and attendant comments), but too much of it was forced, and some of it was just plain crude. I’m sorry, but Bumblebee “leaking lubricant” over someone was past the line.

Anyway, I’m glad I saw it on the big screen. There were a lot of great moments in it, but a lot of the film was just kind of tedious. It felt like they worked so hard on the details that they managed to miss the big picture. Which is kind of ironic for, well, a big picture.

The concept: Three groups of people pursue a fallen star (in this world, a woman). Tristran wants to bring the star back to impress a girl. The cruel princes of Stormhold are seeking the necklace she wears; the one who claims the gem claims the throne. The witch Lamia wants to cut out her heart to restore her own youth for another 400 years. Tristran gets there first, but has to bring her back without the more malicious seekers reaching her.

There’s swordplay, magic, betrayal, comedy, and romance. Michelle Pfeiffer throws herself gleefully into her role as the witch Lamia. Prince Septimus oozes slime as a cross between Prince Humperdink and Professor Snape. And Robert De Niro’s Captain Shakespeare is… indescribable. Charlie Cox as Tristran and Claire Danes as Yvaine (the star) manage to hold their own with the impressive cast of villains and supporting characters.

I was the only one of the four who had read the original novel by Neil Gaiman and Charles Vess, but for the most part I didn’t mind the changes. I did think the climactic battle got a bit overblown after a while, and I really missed one aspect of Una’s character which is revealed near the end of the book.

On a related note, it seems that in the last 3 weeks, the movie “adaptation” (and I use the term loosely) of The Dark Is Rising has been retitled as The Seeker: The Dark Is Rising, probably reflecting how far it seems to have strayed from the source material.

Stardust does it right: change the details, or even the structure if you have to, to make it work in a different medium. But stay true to the heart and spirit of the book.

The movie has two distinct segments, the first focusing on Lochley, now a Colonel and still in charge of the space station, and the second focusing on Sheridan and the techno-mage Galen. Both segments take place during 2271, placing it 9 years after the main story, during what would have been the 5th season of Crusade if the series had lasted.

The result is mixed. The first segment is the weaker of the two, owing in part to the fact that it’s essentially a bottle episode, taking place entirely on the station. Visually it’s very static, with characters mostly standing in one place and talking. This is probably influenced by the virtual sets, and the fact that J. Michael Straczynski directed the movie himself.*

The second segment is much stronger, and feels like a real return to Babylon 5. It helps that Sheridan and Galen play very well off each other. Their scenes together are the highlight of the film, and even though this segment still has its share of two actors in a room talking, it somehow feels more dynamic.

The special effects, of course, were incredible. Babylon 5 pioneered the use of computer-generated effects for television, and being pioneers, the show looks primitive by today’s standards. The technology has advanced immensely in the past decade, and the movie looks like a modern 21st-century skyscraper compared to the original show’s log cabin. More importantly, they’ve managed to make it look better without making it look like another show.

The virtual sets took a little getting used to. They’re better than they were 10 years ago, but still not quite up to the real thing. Plus they have their own challenges for acting, as the actors explained last Friday during the B5: Lost Tales panel at Comic-Con:

Tracy Scoggins: In my tiny corner it was like a little doll house with slippery chairs. I walk out and there is this cavernous green screen and I turned to Joe and asked “where is the door?”

Peter Woodward: With green screen, when you are 360 degree green screen, the cameras stay where they are, and we move. Now that may not seem like a problem, but I get used to that visual image … my background keeps changing. Until you get used to it, it can be very difficult.

The Lost Tales was originally announced as a series of direct-to-DVD releases. JMS explained that the reason he directed this one himself was that he wanted to establish the tone and look for future installments. True to form, Warner Bros. decided to start with just one to test the waters. By the time they went into production, JMS had cut a third segment focusing on Garibaldi, in order to put more time (and more of their limited budget) into the other two segments.

If they do make more, they’ll bring in real directors. And with any luck, WB will be willing to give them the budget for a few more physical sets, and a few more actors. (I counted 3 leads, 4 supporting characters, a couple of extras and some voice-overs. We did shows in high school with more actors on stage.)

This film didn’t wow me as much as I’d hoped it would, but it shows enough promise that I’d happily pick up a second one.

The Lurker’s Guide to Babylon 5.

*JMS is a great writer, but this is only his second time directing, ever. He did a surprisingly good job the first time, with the series finale, “Sleeping in Light.” Of course, he’d had that story in his head for the previous 10-15 years, and had come off of 4 years of production on the actual show.

None of the others we’d been to were anywhere near as full, and we lost track of the series a couple of months ago. Then yesterday I remembered we’d been planning to go see Edward Scissorhands, and figured we’d missed it. (I finally bought the DVD a couple of months ago, but wanted to hold off until after the screening since Katie hadn’t seen it before.) Fortunately, Katie remembered that it was this week, and we were able to make it. (And for once, we made it on Wednesday, so we could go to South Coast Village instead of Rancho Santa Margarita.)

Well, we prepared to turn into the theater parking lot and noticed it was full. Katie was the first to realize why: Johnny Depp. We got in, but I had to park across the street. The crowd was as good as the one for Princess Bride, and there was even one guy in full costume (the normal-clothes version, not the leather and buckles). We were pleased that while they showed “The Twenty,” which I suspect is a contractual obligation, they neglected to turn on the sound! The 15-year-old print was in terrible shape, but the condition was forgotten quickly.

It’s always a risk to go back and watch something you enjoyed when you were younger. Your tastes change as you grow up (or you actually develop a sense of taste). There are some cartoons I refuse to watch because I want to remember liking them. Sometimes they work out. Sometimes they don’t. Edward Scissorhands still holds up: The contrast between the inventor’s mansion and the pseudo-50s achingly “normal” suburbia, Danny Elfman’s fairy-tale music, the neighborhood’s curiosity, then acceptance, then ultimate rejection of this strange visitor, Peg’s determination to make things work out, Kim’s slow realization that her boyfriend isn’t a very nice guy, and that this scary blade-handed stranger is, the cop’s efforts to smooth things over—all with Tim Burton’s distinctive quirky style.

Back to the screening series, it really brings out the difference between the home movie experience and the theater experience. It’s not just the size of the screen and the volume of the sound. It’s the audience. When you have a few hundred people all watching the same movie, reacting to the same things, you get an emotional synergy that you don’t get with a couple of people at home—or with a few dozen people yakking and answering their cell phones!

1. I framed through the end of the Vader vs. Obi-Wan battle in A New Hope after being a bit confused by it last night. Watch closely, and you’ll notice two things. First, Vader’s lightsaber appears to go through Obi-Wan’s, about an inch above the hilt. This I can pin on imperfect special effects and then get on with my life. However, the second thing is that Obi-Wan’s robes start collapsing before the lightsaber even touches him. Kelson, watching it, said, “Does Vader even connect with a body?” I don’t think he does. Which looks like a very plausible solution to the disappearing-Jedi conundrum: if Obi-Wan wasn’t actually killed in action, then all evidence points to non-violent death being the only way to disappear.

2. This time through A New Hope, I had the strange experience of mentally hearing a parallel voice track for Vader, with Hayden Christensen speaking many of his lines. I don’t know how much of this is my own overactive brain (fueled by coffee and Honey Smacks, no less) and how much is a reflection on the acting/directing/writing, but it’s very cool.

3. Toward the beginning of RoTS, Palpatine calls Anakin “son.” It’s a joking, avuncular thing, but in light of later revelations about learning to influence the midichlorians to produce life, he may be effectively telling the truth.

4. I’ve heard it hypothesized that General Grievous is powered by a remnant of Darth Maul. Personally, I think he’s a remnant of a Dug— probably not Sebulba, though the Wikipedia entry doesn’t completely rule it out. Dugs are small enough for a sufficient portion of one to fit in the organic space inside the Grievous exoskeleton; and in Clone Wars, Grievous proved himself adept at fighting with both hands and feet, something that would come naturally to a Dug nervous system. It would also extend the foreshadowing/parallel relationship between Grievous and Vader in a way that seems almost too deep for a Star Wars movie.

5. The thematic triumph of Ep III, so far as I’m concerned, is the complete lack of any outright lines to the effect of “Always there are two.” That the movie could accomplish that visually without having to say it almost makes up for the fireplace scene in AotC.

6. The pose of the charred skeleton outside the Lars homestead evoked an image of mostly-dead Anakin crawling away from lava.

7. Something Farscape would have considered, but wouldn’t happen in the SW universe: Anakin does learn how to manipulate life, and this is how Padmé ends up with twins. Would also have been intriguing (and somewhat Ender-esque) for there to have been only one actual baby (Luke), and for Leia to have been created directly from a dying Padmé in a twisted effort to keep her alive. But then there would have been a need for some event to keep Vader from finding (or trying to find) the kids, which is very neatly handled by the emotional evisceration of believing Padmé dead at his hands.

8. Perfect, perfect payoff with Padmé’s pendant at the end.

We re-watched the previous two movies and the Clone Wars cartoon over the last few weeks, and having seen the entire trilogy, I look at it this way: Lucas gave us 4 hours and 20 minutes of prologue to Revenge of the Sith. That’s all Episodes I and II are: Palpatine setting up his dominoes and getting everything ready to trigger his ascension to Emperor and elimination of the Jedi.

We had already planned to pick up the original trilogy this week or next, and finish the entire series by the end of the month. On the way home I remarked, “You know, I’m not completely insane, so I won’t suggest watching Episode IV now.” Katie replied, “Actually, I was thinking about it.” We ended up watching Star Wars: A New Hope (second-worst title in the series, but it gets a pass since it was tacked on in re-release) starting at 11:00.

It’s strange. The Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones didn’t really change my perspective on Darth Vader much, aside from wanting to add “Now this is pod racing!” to the Death Star trench. Having actually seen the transformation, I really do see Vader differently. Probably closer to the way Luke sees him in Return of the Jedi. Especially in the first movie, where Tarkin is pulling all the strings and Vader is more of an enforcer than a leader, he really seems like someone who is doing what he has to do, like Londo in Babylon 5. Katie said that he’s gotten used to power, and is unwilling to give it up.

One of the great things about the prequel trilogies is seeing the Jedi in their prime, at least as far as their martial arts are concerned. The climactic duel between Obi-Wan and Vader above the volcanoes of Mustafar is no exception. Unfortunately, going from this movie to the original makes the rematch on the Death Star look pathetic by comparison.

Oh, yes: Ewan McGregor is seriously channeling Alec Guinness in this movie.

On to spoilers. The good, the bad, and the ugly.

Did you know Anakin and Padme are Luke and Leia’s parents? And Anakin turns evil and kills all the Jedi and he’s really Darth Vader! OMG! And Palpatine was Darth Sidious all along! OMG!!!!!11111ONE

*Ahem*

Yes, we knew the generalities 20 years ago, but on to the details.

The only things that knocked me out of the movie were Palpatine’s transformation during the struggle with Mace Windu, and Vader’s “Noooooooooo!” scream. The first was in part because it didn’t seem to make much sense (and didn’t seem necessary, since it’s supposed to be about 20 years from now until we next see the Emperor) and in part because the makeup really looked bad. Once he put on a hood it worked. The second… was just plain cheesy. Screams like that rarely work, and when they do, it’s because the actor’s face makes us believe it…and that just wasn’t possible inside that helmet.

Actually, the lightsaber battles with Yoda and Sidious did bother me, because I’m still used to thinking of both of them as leaders, not warriors. Not to say that the battle wasn’t impressive—and I loved the symbolism of Palpatine gleefully trashing the Senate hall.

I had also expected more from the wookiee subplot. It mainly existed to keep Yoda alive during the initial Jedi purge. The clone troopers there were reinforcements, not the main army, so there were only two nearby when the order came, and his sensitivity to the other deaths forewarned him. The Chewbacca cameo was unnecessary, but didn’t bother me much.

Hayden Christensen does a much better job in this movie—or maybe the way he played Anakin in Episode II really was what George Lucas was going for. The central themes seemed to be duality and destiny. Anakin’s duel with Dooku at the beginning very closely mirrors his later battle with Luke. In ROTS it’s subtext, in ROTJ it’s text, but the audience, having seen the later duel, brings an understanding that wouldn’t be present if someone were watching this film on its own, or watching the entire series for the first time in story order.

As for destiny, the catalyst that Palpatine uses to tempt Anakin to the dark side is his fear of losing Padme. Yet Anakin’s turn to the dark side is what causes him to lose her, first by breaking her heart, and next by nearly killing her himself. No wonder in The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi he believes he has no choice. He’s had the classic Greek lesson in fate: You can’t avoid it, and your efforts to change it will bring it about.

I do have to say I was very disappointed in Mace Windu, who proved to be far more interesting in the Clone Wars cartoon than in the actual movies. That, and refusing to let Palpatine stand trial. I wanted to scream “You idiot, he’s set you up!”

I mentioned that Episodes I and II seem like a really long prologue, and they are necessary, in a way. They show the Republic in decay, and they show the Jedi calcifying in their ivory towers. And of course they show Palpatine’s skills as a master manipulator. But for all the action and wars, they’re just walking through it all until the battle on Geonosis when you realize the Jedi are inadvertently helping set up the Empire.

One thing that did surprise me was Padme’s death. I figured Anakin would have reason to believe she was dead, or he would have gone looking for her, even after being encased in armor. But the scene in ROTJ where Luke tells Leia he’s her brother strongly implies that Leia remembers her, because it strongly implies Luke is asking her about his mother. “Do you remember your mother? Your real mother?” … “I have no memory of my mother.” The implication is that Leia knows she’s adopted, and that Luke is specifically asking about her birth mother, since simply asking “Do you remember your mother?” would have made her think of Mrs. Organa. And I doubt even a potential Jedi has memories, even just of “feelings” from the first 5 minutes out of the womb. The leading theory I liked was that one of Padme’s decoys would be seen killed, and that Padme herself would flee to Alderaan with Leia, letting the Organas raise her, and living maybe another two or three years—just long enough for Leia to have memories of her. Of course, for all I know George has changed the scene in the ultra-special DVD edition of Jedi, which I haven’t seen yet. Sometime in the next two weeks. (OK, it didn’t totally surprise me… I’d been reading The Darth Side, after all, and the writer either knew or guessed that she would die… but I wasn’t sure how much was conjecture, how much was rumor, and how much was the fact that the novelization came out a month ago.)

Back to duality, it really hit home that the Jedi and Sith are now equal in number: Yoda and Obi-Wan, Sidious and Vader. Anakin has brought balance to the force, in a way, and in 20 years he will destroy the Sith. But he’ll destroy them from within, by breaking the master-apprentice chain. Sidious himself went through three apprentices and was ready to take on a fourth, and Vader fulfilled his destiny through the standard Sith practice of killing his master… but he did so as he himself was dying, without taking on an apprentice of his own.

So, in summary:

The Good: Dawn of the Rebellion (the moment Bail Organa sees the troops battling a 10-year-old Jedi). Unorthodox battle tactics (General Grievous breaking open the ship’s window and swinging outside). Impressive lightsaber duels. Finally getting to see Alderaan.
The Bad: Palpatine. Evil, evil, evil. Anakin’s slide into darkness (well-portrayed, though).
The Ugly: Names (General Grievous? Count Dooku?). Sidious’ makeup. Vader burnt to a crisp. For that matter, Grievous burnt to a crisp.

Did anyone else find it odd that the final battle of the Clone Wars was won by a Jedi, not with a lightsaber, but with a blaster?

Some things worked, some didn’t, but overall I liked it.

• That’s a bloody awful lot of ships.
• OK, so where’s Cassandra in all this?
• Gee, the way they’re portraying Agamemnon, I’m glad his wife is going to kill him when he gets home.
• That’s odd, the computer-generated orc army looked more realistic than the computer-generated Greeks.
• Ah, political context. They’re right, it doesn’t make sense to send that many soldiers just to avenge one man’s honor. There’s usually something else going on.
• Where the hell is Cassandra?
• Wait, wasn’t this supposed to take 10 years?
• Aeneas, eh? Nice throw-away line!
• Wow, this Agamemnon really is a bastard. I wish I could remember what happens to Brise– uh, waitaminute.
• Uh, what happened to Cassandra?

Because, to be honest, it was terrible.

But terrible in a strangely entertaining way.

While watching it, I thought—many times—that this is what happens when you put every cliché you can think of into one movie. (”Oh, of course the road goes along the edge of a cliff!”) Depending on your mood, it could be the most tedious or most hilarious thing you’ve ever seen. I also spent most of the movie trying to figure out whether or not it was intended to be a comedy.

And thinking back on that, it hit me. Van Helsing is the monster movie equivalent of The Eye of Argon.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with it, The Eye of Argon is reputed to be the worst fantasy story ever written. It’s the tale of the barbarian Grignr and his quest to steal the titular jewel, filled with cruel swordsmen, an evil wizard, disgusting creatures and a beautiful, captive princess, written with prose so purple it’s a wonder it doesn’t creep into the ultraviolet. And yet, reading it, you can never be sure whether it’s intentional parody or an earnest effort by someone who just didn’t realize how bad it was.

Traditionally, Eye of Argon is read as a group, each person trying to keep a straight face as long as possible and passing it on to the next once he or she bursts out laughing. Sometimes getting through a whole sentence about “livid wilderness lands” or “keen auditory organs” is a real challenge!

Read The Eye of Argon… if you dare!

Edited June 19: The the site I originally linked to has vanished, so I’ve re-linked to a copy that’s still up.