Okay, I just couldn’t wait to write this one (I've been writing it in my head ever since I saw the movie), so here it is, faithful readers. Long months overdue, I know, but finally I present for your reading (dis)pleasure my viewpoint on the big Star Wars finale, Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith. And all I can say is, “Wow! What a disappointment!” To be honest I wasn’t really expecting a whole lot, but this movie still managed to be a letdown. I even saw it a second time hoping that a new viewing would give me a better feeling about the movie, but all it did was give me an opportunity to really focus on all the things wrong with it.
Now I’m sure all you diehard Star Wars fans out there are already looking to burn me at the stake, but you’ll just have to get over it. Bottom line, this movie was really mediocre. So let’s get right down to it. What was Episode III’s biggest failing? Well, that would have to be its story. I’m sorry, but George Lucas really did a piss poor job here. And while I’m on the subject, let me pose a question: after it was pretty well established in Attack of the Clones that Mr. Lucas really isn’t much of a romance writer, why on Earth would he choose to make his final Star Wars film a tragic love story??? Because in essence that’s what the movie is; well, what it tries to be, anyways.
The basic premise of the movie is that because of his love for Padme, Anakin Skywalker is manipulated and corrupted by the Emperor to travel down the path of the dark side, in the vain hope of saving her life (after having a vision of her dying, presumably in child birth). Okay, so this isn’t the worst story concept every conceived, I’ll grant you that. But George Lucas simply doesn’t pull it off. And I don’t necessarily think it’s because he’s a bad writer (because I don't); I think the problem lies in the fact that this simply isn’t his genre. And what really annoyed me is that this is really a departure from how things had developed in the second movie. In Attack of the Clones we see Anakin struggling to control his anger, and growing frustrated with how he feels the Jedi Council is limiting his development as a Jedi. Now I thought this was a great premise to start his downward path to becoming Darth Vader -- he is consumed by his rage and his desire for power. And there were some elements in Revenge of the Sith that could have played towards this end, but none of them are used.
For example, early on in the film Anakin and Padme discuss her pregnancy, and their fears of what would happen if the Council discovered the truth. Okay, you’ve got a perfect setup RIGHT THERE for where to take the movie. Let the Jedi Council discover that Anakin knocked up Padme, and have him thrown out of the Jedi. At which point, the Emperor steps in, offering to train him in things far beyond anything the Jedi would have shown him. This plays in to both Anakin’s anger at the Jedi Council for throwing him out, and his quest for greater power. From there you set up the scene where Padme tells him she cannot follow him down the path he is following, and at that point he embraces the Emperor’s quest to wipe out the Jedi, fueled by his rage and his sense of betrayal by the woman he loves.
But there's no follow through to this scene at all (making you wonder why the hell it's even in there. Obi-Wan very much says at one point that he knows Anakin is the father of Padme's baby, but absolutely nothing comes of it). So what do we get instead? We get Anakin on his knees crying and moaning because he’s just killed Mace Windu, followed not five minutes later by him ruthlessly slaughtering little kids like they were nothing. What?!? You have got to be kidding me. The entire way that was developed was completely unbelievable as far as I’m concerned. And while we’re on the subject of unbelievable, let’s talk about Hayden Christensen’s performance. Wow, was that not to be believed (and I mean that very much in a bad way). Sadly, this boy just doesn’t have a whole lot of range as an actor. He did a pretty good job playing the angry adolescent in the second movie, but he simply couldn’t believably portray the depth and range of emotion necessary to show Anakin’s descent into darkness. While I mostly blame the story for making this descent unconvincing, the acting seriously made it worse.
And let’s talk about that horrible (and unintentionally funny) scene at the end where the newly masked Darth Vader does his best Frankenstein’s monster impersonation when he breaks free from the lab table he’d been strapped to. That had to be one of the most blatant, cheesy, B-movie scenes I’ve ever seen in my life (I saw more convincing drama in House of Wax, for crying out loud!). That scene was just plain sad.
So after all that criticism, what was good about the movie? Sadly, not much. As is to be expected from a Star Wars movie, the visual effects were pretty damned stunning, and the battle scenes were great to watch, what little of them there were. And that brings up another problem with this movie – we so got ripped off as far as the Clone Wars go. They made this big deal in the hype leading up to the movie about the Wookies showing up, and there being a battle on their home planet. Well, we got the battle, sure enough, but it needed to be about three times longer! You’re just really getting into the fight when suddenly we cut to a different scene. And then we’ve got all the scenes on the various planets where the Jedi get wiped out. There were some really interesting and cool looking planets, but we hardly get to see them for more than 30 seconds (just long enough to see the Jedi in question shot repeatedly in the back before we move quickly on to the next one). It’s like the actual war and the death of the Jedi was completely secondary to Anakin crying about not letting his wife die. We don’t even really get to see them fight back, for Christ’s sake! Hell, we see a youngling barely into his teens fight off more Clone Troopers before he gets killed than ANY of the experienced Jedi do. What a joke! There’s so much potential for some great science fiction battles on exotic planets, to see the Jedi using their powers and going out fighting, and it’s completely skipped over and rushed through so we can get back to Hayden Christensen trying to show emotional depth – and failing (but hey, we have to get back to those scenes, because we all know that dialogue is really George Lucas’ strong point, now don’t we?).
So let the flaming begin. Feel free to tell me that I have no idea what I’m talking about, that George Lucas is a creative genius whose story decisions are not to be questioned. Hell, Kevin Smith was actually bold enough to compare Episode III to Shakespeare! I’m sorry, Mr. Smith, but George Lucas is NO William Shakespeare, and Episode III doesn’t even come close to Othello or Hamlet. And what about your friends and mine, the movie critics? Most of them actually rained praise down on the film. One frightening individual (who will remain nameless) even had the audacity to call it the best episode of the six (and I think that’s pushing it even for Star Wars fans – there’s no way you can compare the prequels with the originals). Not all of them feel this way, however. And while I normally won’t quote movie critics directly, I do have to post comments made by Jami Bernard of the New York Daily News (this was pulled from the review for the movie on imdb, which can be found here). “The dialogue is astonishingly feeble, the acting unforgivably wooden,” she writes. Boy does she hit the nail on the head. A number of other critics also criticized the dialogue (but that’s not something I generally make much an issue of, since that’s been the case for all three of the prequels – which is a real shame, considering the original trilogy brought us such wonderful and memorable lines as, “Boring conversation anyways. Luke, we’re gonna have company!” God, I love that line! That whole scene rocked). My complaint with the final film isn’t so much with the dialogue, as with the story as a whole. Mr. Lucas, you could have done so much better.
And with that I will close. I encourage any Star Wars fans out there who might read this to please leave a comment or three giving me your take on the finale to the Star Wars saga. I’d love to see a few good fiery rebuttals to my comments above.
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