I sense great fear in you, Skywalker. You have hate. You have anger. But you don't use them.

No 330 - Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith
Director - George Lucas

Episode 3 is the prequel which finally (at times) looks like Star Wars. Episodes 1 and 2 are all taking place in the grand old palaces of Naboo or the super busy super-city of a Coruscant - places which are massively different from the general aesthetic of the original trilogy. However, after the scroll of episode 3, we get to see the old school Star Destroyers back in action. We're beginning with an inter-galactic dog fight and it all feels like star wars.
And yet, what Lucas has managed to do is take the basic designs of Star Wars and use CGI to make it feel wrong. Lets start out with that initial dog fight.

The action is big and dramatic, but there is so much CGI thrown into the sequence that it just becomes a bit of a mess and difficult to follow.
But CGI is a bit of a curse for the film. Everything has been replaced with CGI. Every single shot has CGI in it.
Let IMDB put it into context with some of their hot trivia.
All shots of C-3PO had the entire green screen set reflecting in his shiny gold armor, so digital effects artists in post-production had to digitally repaint C-3PO's armor frame by frame to remove any traces of the set

Seems a bit ridiculous.....
But then, it becomes a lot worse when you realise how all of the characters have been replaced with CGI.
R2D2 is replaced with CGI at times and given so many cool new functions you have to wonder why he never uses them in the future. In fact R2D2 in the time of the Empire is a bit rubbish when compared to the bells and whistles of R2D2 during the time of the senate....
Christopher Lee's Count Dooku is replaced with CGI to give him mad ninja skills during fight scenes - which seems lazy and disrespectful to the grand master that is Lee
Yoda has been entirely replaced with CGI. For everything. Maybe it is the warm fuzz of nostalgia but I find CGI Yoda quite cold and depressing compared to the puppet, and of course it removes any opportunity for Frank Oz's excellent performance.

It seems that George Lucas' unlimited budget has allowed him to think that CGI is the answer to everything. The film suffers from too much CGI.... but the film really suffers from a character who is very much real. Who is, in fact, integral to the series. Hayden Christensen. He is a really bad actor and considering he is supposed to portray the turmoil and downfall of Darth Vader he manages to cheapen 6 films.
Hayden Christensen's portrayal of evil is entirely down to how furrowed his brow is, not only that but the entire fall to evil takes about 30 seconds. At the beginning of a scene he is mourning his attack on Mace Windu (I'll get to this in a sec) but by the end of the scene he is killing children in cold blood. THERE IS NO ARC! It is just BAM! I'm a Baddie! And even after he's got all burnt up, and John Williams' music swells, and the mask goes down, and the first wheezing breath raises the hairs on your arms.... he still manages to fuck it up. Fuck up Darth Vader as a character. Forever.....
I fucking hate you....

I also fucking hate you for killing off Mace Windu in such a weak way.
I hate you for wiping C3PO's memory at the end of the film in order to messily tie up the loose ends.

And yet, there are two defining moments which save the film from being infuriating. Firstly, the Jedi death montage of Order 66 is the Prequel trilogy's closest point to the darkness of Empire. It is bleak, it is emotional, it is gloriously hopeless.
And finally.... the final scenes. We're inside of a ship and we're back in the stark white 70's sci fi interiors. The final separation of the twins and the final moment as Obi Wan passes Luke to Owen and Beru may be the best bit of the entire prequel trilogy. The last shot of Owen and Beru feels exactly like the original trilogy. The strain of the original theme kicks in and I have a wonderful smile on my face.

In the final seconds of the film, Lucas has made me forgive almost everything that went before.

Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering

No 449 - Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace
Director - George Lucas

This may be controversial, but you know what?

Whilst there are some massive MASSIVE flaws with the film (which I'll discuss in a bit) - there are some really exciting bits. Lets focus on the positive shall we. Firstly, there is something which I've omitted from my previous Star Wars blogs - John Williams' excellent score. It is always a dramatic highlight of every film, underpinning the action with a real sense of drama and excitement. When it comes to the new trilogy, the score has been dramatically improved. I mean, cast your ear holes over at the frankly amazing 'Duel of the Fates' which acts as Darth Maul's theme. It is a frankly epic and terrific piece of music. John Williams is an amazing composer (it is such lazy blogging to continuously point to another person's blog.... but still).

In fact, besides John Williams score, Darth Maul is probably the saving grace of the first film, his growly voice and his domineering presence just ripples through the film and lifts it above the problems which are littered throughout. Incidentally, whats happened to Ray Park? He's vanished off the map a bit hasn't he? His fight scenes are really exciting, and inject action into the film - and he has a duel ended lightsaber, which is pretty fucking cool! Who wouldn't want one.

The film's biggest crime is that for large amounts of time it is quite boring, and that's mainly down to the code of the protagonists. Jedis are boring. The reason that the original trilogy works is that Luke doesn't know how a Jedi should act, Vader and the Emperor are evil and Yoda has gone a bit nuts. It is only Obi Wan who plays the wise sage and he is only fleetingly in the series. With the prequels we have a series of films entirely populated by wise and emotionless sages. It means we have a phenomenal cast of people speaking in a gentle monotone and not showing any emotion. Ewan McGregor, Liam Neeson, even Samuel L Jackson spends the film sitting and nodding sagely. SAMUEL L JACKSON?!

So, naturally you welcome the moments of action in the film which lift the tedium of politics, and jedis, and borderline racist aliens. The lightsaber fights are one part of it, but the pod race is another example of dramatic tension and pacing. It shows that Lucas can still shoot big action set pieces. He just chooses not to.
There are two other things of note within the pod race sequence. Firstly, CGI Jabba has none of the presence or icky slimy realness of his puppet self and what is Warwick Davies doing as an extra?

So, I find the dullness of Episode 1 a great crime, but there are also the two grievances which are frequently raised by the fanboys. Firstly the retconning. The fact that by introducing Midi-chlorians, Lucas manages to cheapen the idea of The Force to nothing but a biological oddity. But also, his inclusion of C3PO and R2D2 is actually detrimental to the series. Obi Wan spends an entire trilogy having massive adventures with the droids, and then come ep 4 he states that he's never seen them before. Yeah, they're only robots but you'd still remember them from all your big adventures.

Finally though. We have the Gungans. And I refused to believe that they were as bad as I remembered them being. However, after 30 seconds of Jar Jar lowering the quality of the film i wanted to just kill him. His arrival comes along with jokes about farts and poo and slapstick and the most annoying voice since Chris Tucker in the Fifth Element.

Even Brian Blessed can't save the Gungans.... and he is almost pure undiluted awesomeness.

EDIT

Shit.....
I forgot something.
Basically you can get a whole better idea of The Phantom Menace by watching this instead:

I chose not to choose life. I chose somethin' else. And the reasons? There are no reasons. Who needs reasons when you've got heroin?

No 316 - Trainspotting
Director - Danny Boyle

Ah the 90's and Cool Britannia.
We had Blur. We had Oasis (though I prefer Pulp - who have a song in this film - over either of them). We had Lock Stock and we had this.

'Hollywood Come In - Your time is up' rang the critic quote on the poster. The poster which even today adorns roughly a bazillion bedrooms of students and young adults.

This is one cool film. From the first seconds of the film with the 'dum dum dum' of Lust for Life playing under Ewan McGregor's Renton's iconic 'choose life' speech this film is showing itself as incredibly cool. Yet it walks a very intelligent (and very dangerous) tightrope. You see this film is incredibly cool and it shows taking heroin to be a very lovely and somewhat morish thing. But... in NO way does it glamorise heroin use.
The characters live in horrible squalid squats. There is a lot of poo throughout this film. There are a lot of robberies and a lot of violence.

For every scene in which you see people lying in bliss there are scenes (far longer, more important scenes) of utter horror. Allison's baby dies whilst she is on drugs - a horrible image which haunts the viewer throughout the film, almost as much as it haunts Renton throughout. However, the real warning comes from Tommy. A character that begins the film as one of the few normal people in their social group (he doesn't take drugs. He isn't a psychotic bastard) however after being dumped by his girlfriend he gets involved and everything spirals out of control.
It is quite sad that when we return to Tommy several months after his first hit he is living in a vandalised, dirty, unfurnished flat just lying on a sweat and piss stained mattress. When we return for the 3rd time. He is dead.

Spud ends up in jail, and later seen doped up on the side of a road (literally in the gutter) but Tommy is the warning - Heroin is not only not glamorous, it'll get ya killed.


In fact - for me the most chilling scene is the scene in which Renton overdoses. The mix of imagery as the panicked dealer drags Renton's twitching passed out body into a taxi with the soft tones of Perfect Day by Lou Reed. It is really a moving sequence - worth the price of the ticket alone. And seeing Renton suffer in that moment and the horrific 'cold turkey' sequence would put anyone off heroin forever.

But really this isn't a film about Heroin. It is about Renton trying to get clean, but mostly it is about Renton and his friends. It just turns out that most of his friends are Heroin users. However, the most dangerous of his 'friends' is clean.

Begbie. Fucking Begbie. Robert Carlysle at his most psychotic and terrifying. He has played a lot of psychopaths in the past, but the real chilling thing is how grounded in realism Begbie is. He is just a nutter that enjoys getting into fights. He is that massive cliche... a big violent jock. He is the one that Renton can't escape - he is the one that drags him back to heroin, despite being clean and very anti-smack.
The rest of the cast pale in comparison with Begbie though. Spud is an idiot, a gormless, harmless, smack addict idiot and Sick Boy is a wise alec twat. The other characters are all parents or girlfriends. Bit players in the grand scheme of things. Although I was very amused to see Shirley Henderson playing Spud's girlfriend. Oooh Moaning Myrtle talking about sex and swearing. Love it.

In fact, besides Begbie there is only one character that made an impact. Diane. I think she is hilarious and very cool (obviously as does Renton) and the fact that she is a school girl is hilarious (she is the least convincing teenager though - Kelly MacDonald was 20 at the time and I presume she is supposed to be 14 or 15 in this film.) - but despite scaring Renton to death with worry about going to jail, she turns out to be his most important ally. She writes to him and she cares for him and she's glad when he's off the junk. I like to think they eventually get together. When she has grown up.


The whole film is a slow wake up call. Not about drugs. Renton knows he is addicted. He knows it is bad. He says he should get off it at the very start of the film (that's what makes each failure so crushing). The film is a wake up call that he needs to get away from his idiot friends who bring him down.

So when he finally runs away with the profits of the big drug deal, you cheer.



You want Renton to have 16k to build a better life.



You want Renton to get better and to choose life.



You also know that jail can't hold Begbie forever.... So you want Renton to get far far away.