h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Tuesday afternoon we set up camp in front of the theater. My wife and a friend of hers like to line up for the Star Wars movies. This time it was set up by the official Atlanta fan club [http://www.hothlantarebels.com].

I enjoy the movies, but I went along mostly to be with my wife.

We spent the night talking about Star Wars, playing games, watching the old movies, and being interviewed by the press.

When more normal people started lining up yesterday afternoon, the fan club had set up several games including charades and Star Wars Jeopardy.

Then we finally got in to see the movie. It was good, but it left something to be desired. Lucas has a problem with dialogue. Obi Wan kept telling Anakin the same thing over and over again. The love story was very thin. I think it could have used some more development and exploration. The action was quite good. The climatic light sabre fight was faster than I could follow. The underlying political situation was more complex than anything that I thought that Lucas would do. I thought that was quite good.

All and all, I liked the movie. The silly lines and thin love story were all forgotten after the action at the end of the movie.

I went to see it on the 20th of May.

Lucas's dialogue is pretty bad. His problem is that he can't make his characters speak naturally.

The love story was pretty thin, but fortunately the film didn't dwell on it.

I thought the action sequences (of which there were many) were excellent. The final battle was genuinely exciting.

I thought the political stuff was a bit thin. Lucas made his points in quite a heavy-handed way (Count Dooku's supporters were all capitalists, Annakin condemned democracy outright, rather than be disillusioned with it) but I suppose that's better than simplicity.

There was more meat to the politics than I really thought he would put in there. Political subtlties is not the stuff of epic fantasy, which is what Star Wars really is.

One friend brought up something. He suggested that it would have been better if Dooku hadn't been identified as Darth Tyrannus. Instead, his status could be left ambiguous. I think it's always more interesting when you have multiple factions vying for power.

I'm reading Jerry Pournelle's review of the movie. He talks about the silliness of it, and suggests: '...if there were one intelligent and competent person on either side, this civil war would never have got started. People as stupid as these, in possession of the kinds of weapons they have, probably NEED an Emperor.'

Hhhhm. Having read some of Pournelle's work, some of *his* political organisations seemed in need of a few braincells. A touch of sci-fi jealousy perhaps? Or shall we blame it all on Niven.

I seem to recall his politicians making sense. He has a curious affection for benign autocratic empires, as many old school hard science fiction writers do. Most of it was consistant.