Wait a Week to See Revenge of the Sith

En route from Paris, I read a great column in Esquire magazine. It’s not available online, but in essence it encouraged readers to wait a week before seeing Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith.

Let’s be honest: the first two movies sucked. The stories were poor and repetitive, the special effects were soulless and the acting was slipshod. However, like every other former kid who loved the first three movies, I’m definitely going to see the third one. And it’ll probably suck too. The columnist and I aren’t asking you to not see the film–just wait at least a week.

Why? Because the opening weekend means everything (like, really, everything) to the movie industry. It’s extremely predictive, and therefore determines all sorts of follow-on distribution and merchandising deals. A low opening weekend would send a message to George Lucas and the rest of the Hollywood food chain. A message that trading on a much-loved trilogy with this dreck is evil, and that they should do better.

Unfortunately, even Esquire won’t make a dent in the opening weekend. Still, I think it’d be great if we all stayed away and freaked out a bunch of Hollywood moguls.

I was very pleased to see my former classmate Charles Ross got a side-bar interview about his excellent One Man Star Wars in the same issue. On another related note, here are Kevin Smith’s (of Clerks and Chasing Amy fame) spoiler-ridden thoughts upon reviewing Revenge of the Sith.