Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge Of The Sith

You may be wondering why I've yet to post my precog about this most monumental of all films. (Or more likely, you have not been wondering that at all.) The reason is that I have blocked all images, sounds, words, and other information related to this franchise to prevent them from entering my brain. No trailers, no TV commericals, no websites, no pictures, no stories, no gossip, nothing. I even ran out on the coming attractions of other movies to avoid the teasers. It's a total media blackout.

Why? Remember in Episode I, right before the big duel between Qui-Gon, Obi-Wan and Darth Maul? And remember how Darth Maul pulled out his lightsaber, ignited one side and then ... HOLY SHIT ... it's double-bladed! How fucking cool is that! This is going to be awesome! Remember, how blown away you were by that totally new twist that you never saw coming? Of course not, because you saw it in the trailer, so it was not unexpected at all. Neither were any of the new ships, planets, characters, dialogue, C-3P0's new look, the giantic droid armies, most of the exciting acrobatics and stunts, or Qui-Gon's death, which if you hadn't inadvertally been tipped off to by picking up the soundtrack, you could have easily deduced by clues from the trailer.

In other words, while it was extremely exciting to have all this new Star Wars footage unfolding before your eyes, all the great "wow" moments happened before you actually saw the movie. It definitely took something away from the experience. For example, we've all seen the original trilogy about one hundred times. Imagine if you could see it again, without knowing anything that was to about happen. That'd be pretty awesome, right?

So for Episode II, I tried the media blackout and did pretty well, avoiding most of the ads. However, I made the mistake of looking at the poster, which revealed to me the character of Jango Fett. Not a huge blow, but it still would have been cooler not knowing. For Episode III, I've gone all out. It's been hard, but so far so good. I have not seen one frame of this movie, nor do I know a single plot point, nor the time frame, or any suprise characters. (I do know about one, but that was all over the news a year ago. Unavoidable.) Only a week to go, the hardest week of all, but I think I can do it, provided one of you jackasses doesn't blow it for me.

Anyway, the whole premise of The Precogs is that by absorbing tiny bits of information (photos, trailers, etc.) you can piece together an entire movie before you ever see it. This is one time where I don't want that to happen. That means I can't give you a reliable precog, either. I can tell you that I am not hopeful. I enjoyed Attack Of The Clones in the theater, but every time I re-watch it I like it less, to the point of being angry about how sloppy it is. There have been many mistakes and bungled opportunities in the last two installments. In order to save this series in my eyes, George Lucas is going to have to pull some pretty amazing tricks out of his sleeve, which he hasn't done since ... well ... The Empire Strikes Back. That was 25 years ago.

Think about it. I've basically been waiting my entire conscious life to see the original climactic duel between Obi-Wan and Anakin. With that kind of anticipation, how can anything that happens in this movie leave me satisfied? I suppose there's always hope. Right?

Rating: ?????? Take a deep breath and say a little prayer.