A while ago (six months?) my brother gave me a tip to check out a series of YouTube videos which presented an incredibly funny yet intensely cogent critique of the latest three Star Wars movies. OK, so this is not the most cutting edge and timely news, but these videos are quite possibly better written than the movie series (the Star Wars prequel trilogy) which it attempts to review/critique.
First off, the website is Red Letter Media, and the related YouTube channel is at RedLetterMedia’s Channel.
I suppose that some aspects of these videos are a bit timely in that the final series of reviews of the last of the three movies (e.g. the Revenge of the Sith) finally appeared on their website. I should also preface some of my points by relating that these videos are certainly not for small children (lots of coarse language, and some intercut graphic and bloody imagery…you have to watch it to see how it all ties together…).
But for some of the more adult content on these videos, they actually present a pretty good description of how movie move us, and how dramatic arcs, special effects, emotionally identifying with characters can work. Ironically enough, this is almost an ideal intro to movies course for a high school class (but for some of the aforementioned inappropriate content). Consequently I can only imagine that this will become quite popular on college campuses…
In a strange manner there were a couple interrelated 0pints presented in the latest efforts in these series of reviews. To conflate the movie ‘the revenge of the sith’ with Citizen Kane is a reasonable argument (!!), and that George Lucas may be the same as Kane (disaffected by power and money, losing touch with what made him great, etc.).
So, as a final point, I wonder what would happen to our popular culture if all of the hundreds of other similarly affected, overblown, manipulative, and contemptuous to the movie going public kinds of movies were put under this sort of popular scrutiny…
