Lileks has finally seen Sith, and, in my humble estimation, his review is well worth your reading time. It’s frequently on the snarky side, as Lileks is wont to be, but he’s a very effective writer and his affection for the Star Wars movies is clear, even as he’s blasting some aspect or other of them:

2:45 PM, Southdale AMC theater #4, center row, unobstructed view. Star Wars.

 

If you’re my age, you probably saw the first one in theater. If you share my infantile interests, you probably saw it five times. (Saw it 12 times myself.) So the blue words, the invocation if you will, bring many strange and fleeting emotion[s]. You can’t help thinking who you were then, where you were, what it was like, how little has changed, how much. It wipes the slate clean, those words. Then the CRASH of the brass – that famous chord you could play for a hundred people and they’d never remember the top note that really makes it work – and you’re back where you have been five times before: listening to the stirring theme, reading bad prose. WAR! The crawl begins, helpfully noting that ‘Evil is everywhere.’ Yes, well, that’ll happen.

He continues in more or less that same snarky vein, focusing not so much on the plot — which everyone knows by now anyway — as on specific observations about the movie, the characters, and the conventions of the Star Wars universe. I agree with some of his points, disagree with others, and think nearly all of them are laugh-out-loud funny. My favorite? It has to be either his description of Yoda (“…he reminds me of a cranky old man who finds his favorite stool at Denny’s is occupied by some high schoolers.”) or this priceless bit about galactic architecture:

For God’s sake, why aren’t there any railings anywhere? You build a docking pad so people can visit your 127th floor apartment,but you don’t build a railing? It’s windy up there. I’d get out of my car and crawl on my belly to the porch, and I wouldn’t stand up until I saw something I could grab. Like the hostess.

Now, that’s funny. But the thing I really love about Lileks is how he can downshift from this kind of high silliness into something a bit more serious (if still rendered in his own inimitable idiom) and smack you in the forehead with, well, with the essential truth of the thing:

…when something actually works, it really works. Like Darth’s screaming hatred towards Obi-Wan as he laid burning on the shore. Like Obi-Wan’s venting in the same scene: dammit, kid, you were supposed to be the Messiah, and you end up as Pontius Judas, and not only is everything truly screwed, with my clubhouse on fire and all my friends dead and a mad bastard whose face looks like Jabba’s back in charge of all the fun stuff. It was the emotional high point of the entire series — or so you thought, because you knew it would end soon. How, you couldn’t guess.

 

Well, it ends in sadness and doom. Padmei’s funeral cortege had an august gloomy beauty so great you didn’t even mind Jar-Jar appearing for 3.9 seconds. Organa takes back Little Carrie Fisher to his wife, and as you look at their planet you know it’s all going to be rubble in a few decades. All of it. Vader strides the bridge of the Executor in a scene that brings back the pleasures of “Empire Strikes Back” — you see the officers in their grey uniforms and you know they all speak in British accents. He looks out at the Death Star with Darth Sidious, unaware both wi[ll] perish on v. 2. Finally, Luke is left with his aunt and uncle, both of whom will end up crisped to perfection by xeroxed Bobas many years down the line. But. They stand on the berm — a hillock which manages to be unchanged throughout the decades on a windy sand planet — and cradle the child as they face the setting suns. It’s where Luke stood and dreamed of a life as thrilling as the music that accompanied the scene; it’s where Annakin [sic] stood before he scooter[ed] off to find Mom and carve some Tusk[e]n Chunks. The entire destiny of the galaxy comes down to this place, more or less. With grief explicit and promise implied, the movie ends.

 

And I coughed and wiped my cheeks and stood up and left. We’re finished with that now. It’s done and it’s over.

 

At least until the extended DVD comes out.

Yep. That’s the Revenge of the Sith experience, right there. Check out the rest of what he’s got to say. It’s a good read.