Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith Review
by "Lewis Butler" (gkreme AT gmail DOT com)May 20th, 2005
Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith (SW:RotS)
Reviewed by Lewis Butler
a pdf of this review is available at
<http://2blog.kreme.com/blog/2974/Come_back_George_all_is_forgiven>
Summary
Before Star Wars: Attack of the Clones (SW:AotC) opened I, along with most Star Wars fans, hoped for a movie that simply put, didn't suck. Our hopes were dashed with Lucas's delivery of the weak and wooden sequel to the worst of the six Star Wars films. True, SW:AotC was better than The
Phantom Menace (SW:TPM), but that is damning with faint praise.
This time around, Lucas has delivered. SW:RotS (unfortunate acronym) doesn't suck.
I would put this film third on the list of quality in the six Star Wars films, ahead of the previosu three films. On a scale from -4 to +4 (0 being an average film) I'd rate this a weak +2, despite some of the problems I had with it.
Review
There are many nit-picking things I can say about this movie, and I will get to some of them a little later, but first I want to take the time examine what Lucas gets right in this, the 'final' installment of his Star Wars saga.
First, and most important, is the atmosphere. This is partly due to the excellent scoring of the soundtrack. The movie begins on somewhat of a high- note with a daring rescue, but even then, the tension is clear. Sure, everyone in the audience knows exactly where the story is going to end up, but Lucas manages to create that sense of tension anyway.
Second, as always, is the effects sequences. Needless to say they are good, but more than that, they don't feel like the movie was written around the special effects, as was certainly the case with the interminable pod-racer scene in SW:TPM, which at least one of my friends beleives was so long simply as an advertisment for the Pod Racer computer game. I can't argue with him. Here the effects are there just the same, but the sequences are all very much a part of the story.
Third, the sword fights in this film are quite possibly the best ever filmed, and that is saying quite a lot. Errol Flynn and Todd Armstrong have got nothing on this film. In fact, the various fights, with the exception of the first, even exceed the excellent Darth Maul sequence in TPM
And finally, the characters are finally able to bring some emotion and range to their various roles. Hayden Christensen (Anakin Skywalker) is still not a particularly convincing actor, but with the help of effective shadows he is able to mostly pull off the conflicted angst that envelopes his slide to the Dark Side.
Ewan McGregor (Obi Wan Kenobi) is excellent, and manages to play about ten years older than he is, making up for one of the main problems I had with the 20 year break between this film and the events in 1977's Star Wars (later renamed Star Wars: A New Hope (SW:ANH) ). Obi Wan looks like he's pushing 45 in this film, which makes his age in SW:ANH much more believable.
Natalie Portman (Padme) gets to play with more emotion in this film that any character in any previous movie. Yes, she's pregnant and watching her husband transforming into-well, we know were he's going, don't we?-but she does it well.
Jimmy Smits (Bail Organa) is underused, and Samuel L Jackson (Mace Windoo) has some plot issues. Christopher Lee (Count Dooku) is, well, Christopher Lee, and Ian McDiarmid (Supreme Chancellor Palpatine) is just what he needs to be, a sneaky manipulative
bastard.
People will likely complain about the lack of depth to the characters, but Star Wars has never been about complicated characters. Look back at SW:ANH or even Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back (SW:ESB) and you will not find a lot of depth there either.
Minor Spoilers Follow
There are two scenes that I would like to point out as being especially good.
The first is a no-dialog scene in which Padme looks out over the city toward the Jedi Temple and Anakin sits in the Jedi Council Chamber look- ing out across the city toward Padm 'e. They are miles apart, and yet the connection is obvious. Lucas manages to linger on this scene for just long enough.
The second is the application of the Darth Vader headpiece to Anakin's face. Lucas uses a very tight close up on the mask descending, then shows us Darth in profile, again, very tight. The final piece (the cowl) is applied and there is a pause, and then the signature respirator sound we know and love so well. Personally, I would have preferred the camera hold for a second breath, but the scene works.
There are a few lines I liked from the film as well:
So this is how Liberty dies, with thunderous applause.
You're either with me or you're my enemy.
I think Anakin stole that second quote from either George Bush or Tony Blair, but I can't find the reference.
Now, for the problems, and there are a lot of them. Yes, they are all nit-picking, but they add up to certain carelessness that really detracts from the overall movie.
- Anakin leaves on a mission, Obi Wan follows him a day later, at least, and yet Anakin is still there, despite his mission having taken less than 10 minutes to complete.
- Anakin builds C-3PO and uses him as his house-bot for a considerable period of time, yet doesn't recognize him in SW:ESB 's carbonite scence.
- At one point, late in the film, Anakin refers to his loyalty to the Republic, then seconds later refers to 'my Empire.' Anakin doesn't even know that there is an Empire at this point. This is the most glaring example, but this happens all over the last act of the film, where Republic and Empire are interchanged seemingly at random.
- Mace Windoo. Need I say more? Ok, I will. Mace goes completely off the deep end there at the end. Anakin, being the voice of reason, is sticking to his Jedi training and Mace is practically foaming at the mouth in his desire to kill Palpatine. Did I get a different Jedi Manual[1] than Mace did? Since when do Jedis kill 'defenseless' prisoners? Even if they may not be all that defenseless, this whole scene just struck me as wrong.
- In SW:ESB Obi Wan's ghost says to Yoda, "That boy was our last hope." to which Yoda replies, "No, there is another." This would certainly imply that Obi Wan did not know about Leia.
- "The children must be hidden away where the Sith cannot find them." "We'll send the boy to his family on Tatooine." [2] Excuse me? Seems to me that might be the first place someone might look, no?
- Why was Chewbacca in this movie? I mean, seeing a bunch of crazed wookies fighting was quite cool, don't get me wrong, but really, why specifically Chewbacca? And by name, even? This felt like a forced connection for no particular reason other than breaking out the Chewbacca molds over at Hasbro.
- The whole reference to Qui-Gon Jinn felt very forced as well. If he was able to 'reach out' as Obi Wan was later able to do, why didn't they just show him. Was Liam Neeson too busy, or too ashamed of SW:TPM ?
[1] Metaphorically speaking
[2] These two quotes are from memory, may not be exactly right
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