Star Wars 3: Revenge of the Sith review

2005.06.03 — Entertainment | Movies | Movie Reviews | by Andrew Cole

At long last, almost 30 years after Star Wars first lit up the silver screen, the rambling, rag-tag saga of Anakin Skywalker has come to a conclusion. Revenge of the Sith is a grand undertaking, weakly-scripted and inexpertly-acted, but it has its moments... and little of the oh-my-god-that's-stupid moments that has marred previous episodes.

George Lucas envisioned the behemoth project as an epic like the legends of old: the hero of mysterious birth and low status; the rise to greatness; the fall and death; the resurrection and vindication; and the fulfillment of a prophesy. Hurray and huzzah! He is The One! More specifically, he is "the one to return balance to the Force"... or the one to restore the waters/provide salvation to mankind/become rightwise king of all England/destroy the Matrix and its overlords (or whatever the hell Neo did in those stupid movies).

Lucas's story is cleverer than most messiah stories in that Anakin Skywalker actually becomes a tool of evil for a time before he is essentially rescued from this fate by his son. The story of Luke Skywalker is a second hero myth, with most of the same elements.

The fact that Lucas is a poor dialog writer, lousy casting director, and so-so director of photography is moot compared to the grandness of the story and the depth and spectacle of the universe he has created. After all, if you want romance, you've got a dozen fine films to choose from each year. But if you want a running battle between a swordsman riding a giant lizard and a tuberculoid cyborg riding a one-wheeled motorcycle, who can you turn to?

And Lucas created his world with little reference to any earlier works other than the laughable Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers serials. Does stealing count when all you're stealing is dreck?

The plot of the film concerns the rise of Anakin Skywalker among the jedi and as the right-hand-man of Chancellor Palpatine in the middle of a war with Trade Federation's robot army. Palpatine uses the pretext of security to reorganize the republic into an empire and begins throwing his weight around. Along the way, he manages to corrupt Anakin and turn him against the other jedis....

Story-wise, this is all accomplished more adroitly than in the previous two films, altho characters seem to sense whatever is convenient and only what is convenient, and the dialog is still as clunky as ever.

When the clone troopers begin executing order 66, I had to wonder: none of the jedis saw this coming? What good is the Force? And Obi-Wan: seriously; you were in the dark about the Padme/Anakin relationship? Dude, did you think they were Scrabble buddies? And anyone who can forgive—truly forgive—Lucas for the Frankensteinian entrance of Darth Vader and his pathetic "Nooo!" is a better man than I.

And talk about not giving the female lead much to do.... Lucas puts Padme in a family way immediately and hardly lets her leave her apartment. There must be half a dozen scenes with the senator lounging in her penthouse. Meanwhile, a two-foot-tall CGI version of a foam puppet gets multiple sword-fighting, mystery-solving, and wookie-thanking scenes.

The special effects are as lively as ever, altho seeing Count Dooku do a triple Lindy for the third time or so made me wonder how good Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker really were in episodes 5 and 6. Some "mythology" elements are handled very nicely, like the proto-TIE fighters and how the clone troopers turn into episode 4 stormtroopers thru subtle armor changes... and then continue changing thru episodes 5 and 6.

While it's not the best of all possible space epics, Star Wars is a great accomplishment, a rich artistic body of work, and a cultural touchstone—and Revenge of the Sith is a fitting and fairly thrilling end to the new trilogy.

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