Thoughts on watching Revenge of the Sith on telly

[brixtonbrood]

Carrie Fisher is an incredibly underrated actress.

Watching Natalie Portman, who is alleged to be able to act, wade through the waist deep wet cardboard of Lucas's dialogue made me compare her performance with Fisher's. Line for line, in cold hard print, (once you rule out Empire Strikes Back, which had actual screenwriters), Leia's dialogue is just as dire as Amidala's, but Fisher's performance makes you go with it, she oversells it enough to give it a bit of buoyancy rather than let it hang lifelessly in the air.

The same applies to Harrison Ford of course, but he's hardly underrated, and he is claimed (mythically?) to have rewritten the worst bits of dialogue himself.

Comments

NOOOOOOOOOO!

[sparkymark.livejournal.com]

She could be doing what I think Ewen McGregor does, which is to act (i.e. behave) like its beneath him to even try and make decent stab at it. IMHO that lets himself down, lets George Lucas down and lets the whole class down.

Re: NOOOOOOOOOO!

[brixtonbrood.livejournal.com]

I don't mind McGregor's performance - he's visibly having fun, albeit with a touch of laughing-at rather than laughing-with. And how can you complain he's not trying when he rolls out an actual Alec Guinness impression - I'd say that's worth the price of admission in itself - as long as you got in on a two-for-one student rate mid-afternoon discount.

Re: NOOOOOOOOOO!

[asajeffrey.livejournal.com]

Snap!

Re: NOOOOOOOOOO!

[asajeffrey.livejournal.com]

That would be McGregor in the 2nd and 3rd films. In the first film, he still looks like a kid running around the playground making "vnyoowwr" noises with his lightsabre, which is just about the only reason for watching the thing.