Star Wars: Episode 3: The Search for More Money

Or was that Spaceballs 2? No matter.

As the massive dorks or "OC" fans will know (and those groups ain't exactly mutually exclusive anyway), the new trailer for Episode 3: Revenge of the Sith premiered tonight on Fox. I failed to catch it on television, but managed to download it via the extremely useful BitTorrent fileshare system.

And if you can manage to locate your own copy of this trailer, you absolutely should. It rules! Based only on this brief glimpse, it appears Lucas has finally taken the prequels where I wanted them to go. It's dark, it's troubling, it features a lot of Jedi being attacked and wiped out, and there's actual battles in outer space.

Have you noticed how few outer space battles Episode 1 and 2 contain? The series is called Star Wars, after all, not Seemingly Endless Intergalactic Trade Negotiations. Hopefully, Revenge of the Sith will finally deliver on the initial promise of these movies.

Although you never know...I recall being extremely enthusiastic about the trailers for the other two prequels, and then having my hopes cruelly dashed by movies more interested in gay robot shenanigans and sub-Garden State love stories than adventure or fun. Many have argued that Lucas sought to take the series in a bold, innovative direction, turning them from whiz-bang serial-style adventures into thoughtful polemics on fascism and tyranny. Or some crap like that.

But I don't want thought-provoking political discourse from George Lucas or Star Wars. We've got The Wayans Brothers for that!

UPDATE:

Rumors are buzzing around the Net today that Lucas may actually make Episode 3 a PG-13 film! That would be a tremendous step in the right direction as far as I'm concerned. This is the tough, violent part of the story. Can you satisfactorily show me the entire Jedi nation being wiped out and still earn a PG? Unlikely...

Anyway, everything I've seen from Lucasfilm this week has been entirely encouraging. Maybe this prequel thing's gonna work out okay after all.