Star Wars Hangover

I'm running on about 3 hours of sleep. My brain isn't thinking entirely clearly but I'm here - and yes, I'm blogging at work.

The movie itself was quite good. As many are saying, it is reminiscent (I'm surprised I can use words like that right now) of the original trilogy. Reminiscent, but not quite as good.

Christensen was better than I expected. He still doesn't play the conflicted soul well but once he switched to The Dark Side he was believable. I thought the scene with the newly-masked Darth Vader was just a little on the hokey side and the sequence surrounding it could have been done better overall. Anakin's accident - the reason for the now required black armor - was done very well and is easily believable.

The theater disappointed, as expected. The sound wasn't great but it wasn't bad... when it was working at all. At least three times during the show, the sound cut out completely for about ten seconds each time. Good thing it came back each time, too, because even ten seconds was right at the edge of tolerance for inciting a riot.

The wife and I told the theater manager about it as we left and he gave us refund passes. Surprisingly, nobody else told them. He was actually glad we said something because that auditorium, as are several others, is newly remodeled and has a brand new DTS sound system (not that you can really tell. I watched Hitchhiker's Guide in DTS and completely missed the dolphin songs during the production company logos). Plus, they previewed the prints earlier in the day and didn't have any problems. His disappointment showed when he said, "We tried so hard to make sure everything went off without a hitch..."