Hype, generally, is a good thing. But only for laughing at people who fall for it. Like the people who went to see the Harry Potter (DVDs/books) movies dressed up as wizards. Gibbon-brained fools, the lot of them.

Not hecklerspray, though. We’re a hard nut to crack, we see straight through petty marketing ploys. And who can blame us? After the double-whammy of disappointment from Be Here Now (CDs) and Eyes Wide Shut, (DVDs) we’ve been let down too often to get excited by anything anymore.

And that’s why Star Wars Episode III: Revenge Of The Sith, is so annoying. The hype appears to be working.

To be fair, we were down on Episode III from the outset.
Laughing at the geeks already lining up outside cinemas, and making the
fair assumption that because the last two were basically rubbish,
Revenge Of The Sith would be, too.

But now the film has been seen by a few people, and their reports
are mostly glowing. The best news of all is that’s it is being rated as a PG-13 movie
in America. All five of the others were simply PG. By giving it a PG-13
rating (pretty much a 12 here), it’s suggesting that the movie will be
slightly more scary and ultraviolent.

If you’re wondering, the official line on the rating is that it contains "sci-fi violence and some intense images", which is kind of vague, but it certainly beats The Wild Thornberrys (DVDs) "contains mild peril" warning. The word on the grapevine is that the film contains a section where Anakin Skwalker kills a load of baby Jedis. Which sounds fairly intense.

And there’s apparently a scene where a character catches fire, and runs around screaming in anguish as the flesh peels off his body. Hopefully it’ll be Jar-Jar Binks, but that’s probably wishful thinking.

George Lucas is reported as saying that he thinks the film’s graphic violence will cause the film to fail at the box office, but that’s just probably him covering himself because the other two didn’t set the world on fire.

Of the people that have seen the new Star Wars movie, director Kevin Smith has called it "fucking awesome", and said that "This flick is so satisfyingly tragic, you’ll think you’re watching ‘Othello’ or ‘Hamlet,’". But, you know, he probably thought Jersey Girl (DVDs) was pretty good, too.

Steven Spielberg (DVDs), an arguably better arbiter of taste, called XFM yesterday as part of some smug phone-in competition, and when questioned about Episode III, he said it was "the best of the last three films". But that’s not exactly high praise. It’s like saying the third series of My Hero is better than the last two.

Despite our natural misgivings about Revenge Of The Sith,
we’re quite secretly quite looking forward to it. And if you’ve seen
the clips at a cinema, you probably are too. If you haven’t, here are a
few nuggets of Star Wars trailer goodness.

But if it does turn out to be cack, don’t come running to us.

[story by Stuart Heritage]