the shape of things to come

The guru and I went to see star wars episode three last weekend, it being a bank holiday after all (umi-no-hi, or day for the sea, but not a lot of sea in Saitama (though the river does smell a bit fishy at times)). But how, you may be asking yourself, did you go and see a film with a two month old baby son? Easy really, I went on Sunday and the guru went on Monday, meaning we both enjoyed a pleasant day out and visit to the cinema, though not exactly with each other. Oh well.

This was a shame as we both enjoyed the film very much. For my part i thought it was a lot better than the critics had given it credit for and certainly the best of the 'new' series (though admittedly not difficult!). OK, it has some crap dialogue, but all star wars films have, it's what they do. I was especially annoyed by one critic saying how out of place it was for Obi-Wan to say "I've got a bad feeling about this" towards the start of the film - does this critic know nothing? Has he not seen episodes 4-6? All the way through, in every film including the originals, someone like Luke or Han or Leia say "I've got a bad feeling about this". Yes, it's cheesy, your point being? Now move along.

So, the FX were cool, the spaceship battle scenes fantastic, the light sabre duels just rocked (though got a little tired of Yoda's jump/spin thing), Padme really looked 8 months pregnant with twins, someone had had a word with George Lucas so there was no 'cute' in the film and the story sort of made sense, if you didn't ask too many questions.

But more important than that was what transpired last week. As Japan is sooo behind the times, episode 3 only came to these shores last week, so on domestic telly they have been showing all the other movies, newer ones and the originals. Last Thursday they showed the re-mastered version of Return of the Jedi and of course it had all the extra little scenes and what not. But then, at the end , a travesty. The final scene on Endor has everyone jolly happy and ghost version of Obi-Wan joined by Yoda and then, finally, Anakin Skywalker. OK, but in this new version the actor playing Anakin, whose face we see when Luke rescues him so we know what he looks like, has been replaced by Hayden Christiensen, the chap playing Anakin in the new movies! Talk about a Stalinist re-writing of history! This is my childhood they are fucking with! Why did they need to do that? We've seen Anakin's face already and the person at the end of the film is not him.

Unnecessary and annoying (and probably not worth getting angry about, but, dammit, someone's got to have standards).