Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith (Ewan McGregor, Natalie Portman) The following review has spoilers
There's good news and there's bad news. The good news is that the conclusion of the Star Wars series, Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, does not shy away from the dark subject matter that is required to set up the first installment from back in 1977. This is the darkest chapter yet made, and should please the diehard fans who were not impressed with the breezy elements in the first and sixth episodes of the franchise. The bad news is that, for another category of fans (including myself), who were hoping to see a gifted storyteller (writer/director George Lucas) answer any number of questions, inconsistencies and mysteries that were generated in past chapters, the results work in some places but tragically misfire in others.
Since the first two episodes essentially tried to make a hero of Anakin Skywalker, the young Jedi warrior who goes on to become the ruthless villain Darth Vader, Episode III has a lot of ground to cover in a short time. "Ani" (Hayden Christensen) must go from being the hero at the start of the film to the villain by the end. The 0 to 60 about face here makes it much more difficult to suspend our disbelief. When the mysterious Chancellor Palapatine (Ian McDiarmid) is kidnapped, Anakin and Obi-Wan Kenobi (Ewan McGregor) are off to save him from a new bad guy, General Grievous (given the wealth of bad guys Lucas has created, Grievous is poorly named, clumsily executed and boring to watch). This sequence is handled unwisely from a plotting perspective. Lucas should have let Obi-Wan save the day in the opening sequence for two reasons; one, it would give Anakin a reason to transition to jealousy and build stronger hatred towards Obi-Wan, and two, it also would have helped make Obi-Wan out to be less of an incontinent Jedi Knight (in the second film, Attack of the Clones, Count Dooku (Christopher Lee) promptly takes care of Kenobi and does so again at the top of this film; the believability that Obi-Wan and Anakin would be fairly matched in their eventual lightsaber battle is severely compromised, particularly when we already know what the outcome is supposed to be).
The film then settles into unsatisfactory exposition as Palpatine convinces Anakin that the only way to save his wife Padme (Natalie Portman) is to learn the dark secrets of the Sith and, naturally, kill a class of Jedi children while Darth Sidious executes "order 66" (incidentally, doesn't Obi-Wan say in the original trilogy that Darth Vader and the Emperor hunted down the Jedi and killed them? There would have been so much more to squirm at if the pair of Sith lords tag teamed and took on the Jedi, but instead we get some clone troopers pinging off the Council -- and so very easily, at that! Where do Sith lords come from? How does Sidious find and groom them?). Order 66 is meant to be some kind of pre-programmed order the Emperor masterminded, but how? Was it Sypher Dias who programmed the clone troopers on the planet Kamino? Much as I hate the "talking villain" scene where we hear a monologue about how everyone fell right into their trap, this movie needs it.
Some of the regular favourites are back, including R2-D2, C3PO, and Chewbacca, in a tacked-on bit seemingly designed purely to give Lucas the chance to depict the Wookiee homeworld, Kashyyyk. There is no narrative or dialogue in the scenes, and when Yoda (Frank Oz) says he will miss Chewbacca (Peter Mayhew) on his way out, we have no idea what he's referring to. There isn't even a scene when they meet each other and now they're weepily saying goodbye. There seem to be more than a few scenes missing from this part of the film.
Speaking of which, Yoda once again steals the show, particularly when he actively participates in the proceedings instead of hmming and hawing while chaos buzzes all around him. His duel with the Emperor easily trumps the Obi-Wan/Anakin showdown, however as soon as the little green critter breaks free, he declares he has to go into exile. Huh? Although we know Yoda needs to end up on Dagobah for the events in Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back, shouldn't he try to see if he can be of any more help to those who are still fighting? With this one line of dialogue, Yoda seems almost to be feeling sorry for himself, instead of seeing what more can be done to ameliorate the dire situation. It's the same problem with a lot of the film. The characters say things and act certain ways because Lucas feels he has to set the stage for Episode IV: A New Hope. In a way, of course he does. Yet he has to remember that fans want to see it done well, not shoddily through cutting corners.
Episode III continues Lucas's propensity for forgetting details in favour of assaulting the audience with visual splendour. Coruscant, for example, a planet that is essentially one giant city, has traffic continuing to putter on in straight lines throughout the film, even when the entire Senate is overthrown, becomes the Galactic Empire, and all hell has broken loose. To boot, the heroes always seem to be the only ones exempt from driving in these traffic lanes. Won't they risk causing an accident by swooping around at their leisure?
Lucas also neglects to explain how Chancellor Palpatine has been able to stand around in the same rooms as the Jedi Council in the three new films; an evil Sith Lord who is the very epitome of evil and even has conversations with Darth Maul and Darth Tyrannus on Coruscant in the first two films goes completely undetected by all of the Jedi, whereas Yoda can sometimes sense things are not right with the Force from halfway across the galaxy. How many times do we have to yell to the Jedi warriors: 'Look beside you! That guy there, Palpatine? If you "search your feelings", you'll see you're standing next to that elusive Sith Lord you've been looking for!!!' The Force ultimately becomes some contrived plot device instead of the cosmic fabric that "binds all living creatures together".
More confusing is how no one on the Jedi Council, including Obi-Wan, was able to sense or discover that Padme and Anakin were married. At the end of the second feature, the lovestruck pair had to elope on Naboo to maintain their secrecy. The third film shows them living together on Coruscant... and no one has figured it out? What does Anakin tell Obi-Wan after a long day? "Hey, Master, I'm really spent. I'll be over at the Queen's place. Er, forget what I just said. I'll be at my bachelor's pad." Considering Padme and Anakin hold each other in plain view from her balcony on numerous occasions, there must be a whole lot of privacy on this city-planet. And yet, there isn't, is there? Obi-Wan is able to see the exact footage of Anakin obliterating the Jedi younglings on a security hologram, so that squanders that theory, I guess.
Another curious plothole left by the wayside is how Obi-Wan never seems to recall owning a droid, yet they've interacted throughout the first three episodes. And why is there no opposition in the Senate when the Emperor declares they have to hunt down the Jedi? Are all species and representatives in the Senate against the Jedi Council? When did this come about? What happened to the other allies, such as the Wookiees, who oppose the new Galactic Empire? And why does the Emperor insist the droid army needs to be de-commissioned, when these could/would help solidify his reign over the galaxy? I'll tell you why -- because there are no droid army machines in Episode IV, and Lucas had to answer that plothole with a pat answer.
Despite these and many, many more inconsistencies, I enjoyed a lot of Revenge of the Sith, which has a fairly good pace and sets up some of the other major events reasonably well. Generally though, it had too much technology and not enough natural environments; here, Naboo and Tatooine are footnotes rather than scenic backdrops. The emotion in Episode III works for the most part, but pure Star Wars fans will find their heads racing a lot faster than their hearts as time ticks by and many important story elements go unresolved.
One great thing about the look and feel of the movie is it has nice visual echoes from past installments. Some camera shots are similar or just set up structurally very close to scenes from the other chapters. The machines themselves begin to resemble the ones from episodes IV, V and VI, which is great for continuity purists and yet are different enough to become a veritable goldmine for the toy manufacturers. When the newborn twin Luke is given to Owen and Beru, it's a nice touch that connects the two generations of the series.
The characters move about in Episode III like chess pieces on a board instead of being motivated by stronger plot developments. What really comes into focus is how much better the original trilogy is than the new one. All special effects arguments aside, the first series had more heart, more humour and more humanity. Not to mention a better story. At one point, a Frankenstein-inspired Darth Vader cries out, "Nooooo!" and one recalls that when Mark Hamill did the exact same thing in Empire Strikes Back after his hand was cut off, it seemed so much more natural and wasn't nearly as cringe-inducing. Like Vader, Lucas's obsession with the technological seems to have obscured his vision of what was good and pure from the first series. Revenge of the Sith ends one of the most beloved franchises in cinema on a subdued whimper.
