spoilers

Well, you may have noticed that the lunatics briefly took over the asylum, but order has been restored. I'm back, and experiencing for the first time the odd sensation of reading my blog without knowing what's on it - thankfully talented upstart Dan has done a really great job of looking after things and should obviously get his own blog. I hope he does...

After a week away in the sun a British bank holiday seems especially grey, although I shouldn't knock a further day off work. Last night me, Vic and Andrew (who has revived his Bedsit Bomber blog, good) went to see the latest Star Wars film, and was grudgingly very impressed with it, in fact I thought it was rather brilliant, although that might just be the big-screen effect. The usual Star Wars caveats obviously apply (wooden dialogue, clunky acting - oh no, that should be other way around) and the baddies - the excellent Chancellor excepted - don't really seem all that bad. I thought Darth Maul was laughable in the first film, was unimpressed by Dooku in the second (although it's customary to say that Christopher Lee was brilliant) and the robot baddie, General Grevious (doh!), in this one, was rubbish - kind of like a folding bicycle with an attitude problem. Is he a man, is he a wagon wheel?? What made/makes Vader and the Emperor frightening is the fact that there lurks a human beneath that mask/hood. A robot does not do it for me, however flashy his light-sabre technique.

That said, the film bursts into life immediately and pretty much stays that way. The ending was a bit flat, especially the way that every character is bluntly shoe-horned into his or her starting position in the real Star Wars film, but it's very exciting regardless. I did wonder to what extent Lucas was informed by his viewing of Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings films (more portentous but fun nonsense) - certainly his closing scenes, where the location of Anakin's descent to the dark side takes place, closely resembles Jackson's denoument in Mordor, and twice - once when the defeated Yoda escapes by crawling through a ventilation shaft, and when Vader crawls from the volcanic lava - I was reminded of Gollum, whose path is a similar one to Vader's; corrupted by evil and dehumanised in the process. Still, the moment where Vader takes his first breath is thrilling, and original.

I kept trying to ignore that the Palpatine/Chancellor/Emperor character walked exactly like Montgomery Burns.