Revenge of the Nerds

I saw Star Wars last night and enjoyed it. It was bad everywhere I expected it to be bad, and was better than the last installment. Like nearly everyone in the civilized world (er... American Hegemony?) I thought it was a bit of a shame that it was merely good and not great - as usual the New Yorker does the best job of ripping it up.

I though that review was too harsh, but frankly I walked away from this Star Wars less delighted than I did from The Phantom Menace. I know The Phantom Menace was terribly weak and confused, but it came closest to capturing the glee of the originals for me. The pod races, the duel at the end both captured something that the seething undulating noise of computer generated battles and comical Jedi somersaulting did not. The Phatom Menace was moronic, cheesy, slipshod, but occasionally, fun.

Not that there wasn't fun in this one. The opening action was delightful, depsite ArToo's sudden kung-fu antics. After that... meh. Still the possible story that might have been told about Anakin's descent will keep us geeks, and even non-geeks like my sweetie, talking for weeks. In our minds and in the chatrooms we'll be following a version of C.S.Lewis's advice on listening to uninspired preaching - if you can notice the flaws, well, just imagine the better version and pretend you heard that instead!

Of course everybody laughed when Yoda announced that he had "good relations" with the Wookies, and again at the tearful parting, so all in all, I'm really glad I saw it on the big screen!