Star Wars Episode III: Review of the Sith

WARNING: SPOILERS!

Because one of you demanded it, here is my review for Revenge of the Sith.

Meh.

Okay, fine. I have more to say. Truth be told, I actually did like it. I didn't LOVE it, I just liked it. Well, more kind of liked it. I liked it because it was the last one, I liked it because it finally set up the original trilogy, I liked it because it had Darth Vader in it and I liked it because it didn't have Jar-Jar Binks in it (technically, it did, but it was all of 2 seconds, and he didn't speak).

There were things I enjoyed about the movie itself too. Ewan McGregor turned in another excellent performance as Obi-Wan. Honestly, I don't know that these movies would have been even watchable without him. He truly has brought the phrase "doing the best he can with what he's given" to new heights. What else was good? Well, I'm a sucker for ray guns and spaceship battles, and there were plenty of those in this movie. I actually enjoyed the spectacle of the prequels, though I know some have criticized the endless fights and battles as overkill. To me, you can never have too much of people shooting each other with rayguns and fast spaceships blowing stuff up. Also, the lightsaber duels were awesome. Mace Windu vs the Emperor was pretty sweet, as was Obi-Wan vs Anakin. Actually, that was more than pretty sweet, I'd call that wicked sweet. A lot of the interplay between Anakin and Palpatine was pretty cool, as was the notion that it was ultimately the love he had for his wife that drove Anakin to his fall. The troopers turning on the Jedi, Yoda vs the Emperor, Bail Organa... good stuff. And I loved seeing the ship from the beginning of A New Hope, as well as Vader, the Emperor and a young Tarkin overseeing the construction of the Death Star at the end. And seeing what were clearly prototype TIE and X-Wing fighters was also fun.

One scene that I really liked for some reason was toward the end. Anakin has become Vader (though not yet armored up), has slaughtered the Younglings and Padawans (more on that later) and Bail Organa has just stopped by the Jedi temple to find out what the hell is going on. He's met by a squad of troopers that basically tell him "nothing to see, move along" when all of a sudden, this Padawan kid leaps out of nowhere and starts going to town on the troopers. They overpower him and plug him full of holes, at which point Organa freaks and takes off, but I thought as a scene it really worked.

Now for some stuff that didn't work.

The Love Story. Holy CRAP, does Lucas write lousy dialog, especially when he's trying to write a love scene. The love scenes were marginally better than in the second film, possibly only by virtue of the fact that there were less of them. As with the second film, I don't even buy these two characters as casual acquaintances, let alone passionate lovers. Christensen looks like he's got gas most of the time, and Portman looks like she's practicing her lines for Garden State in her head. And Padme's pregnancy happens in some sort of weird Star Trek-ian temporal anomaly. In the space of what seems to be a few weeks (days?), she goes from just telling her husband the news, to kind of pregnant, to giving birth. Whatever. Maybe the midichlorians did it. In fact, I'll bet they did, since that's just queer enough to be something Lucas would think is cool. And while we're on the subject of Padme, she pretty much does three things in this movie. She cries, gives birth and dies. Meh, meh, meh. Natalie Portman is another shining light of these movies, but given what she had to work with here, even doing her best wasn't much help. You can almost see the relief in her eyes when Vader Force-chokes her at the end. As though she's saying, "Thank GOD. Now I just have to lay there for the rest of this movie and look pained."

The Obi-Wan/Anakin Friendship. Sorry. Not buying this either. Somehow these two have gone from barely tolerating each other to being the best of friends, nay, BROTHERS between two movies. How? Why? Dunno. I guess it wasn't important enough to show us. Much like his relationship with Padme, Anakin's friendship with Obi-Wan is there because it has to be, not because of any organic plot development. Which makes it really hard for me to be emotionally invested at the end when Obi-Wan slices up Anakin and leaves him for dead. Rather than, "Wow, what a shame", I'm thinking "About damn TIME! You should have done that a whole movie ago!"

General Grievous. While I liked the CONCEPT behind this character, thought he looked pretty cool and enjoyed his fight with Obi-Wan, he suffers the same problem as Darth Maul and Count Dooku. Aside from their jack-assed names, one thing these three characters have in common is the fact that they're thrown into the story with no real anchor to the plot. Darth Maul has all this set-up in Phantom Menace and then just dies at the end. Dooku shows up in Clones, and it's clear he's been doing the Sith thing for a long time. Why wasn't he Palpatine's apprentice all along? And then he's just dispatched at the beginning of this movie. Wouldn't it have made more narrative sense, and made a nice bit of dramatic symmetry with Jedi, if Anakin killing Dooku is his initiation into the Sith? "Strike him down, young Skywalker, and take his place at my side." But no. Let's kill him right away, since General Grievous even makes him superfluous as leader of the Separatists. And that brings me back to General Grievous. He just kind of shows up at the beginning of the film, no explanation given. If you hadn't seen the Clone Wars cartoon, you'd have no idea who he is, where he comes from or how he does what he does. And then, like the others, he's dead. Meh.

Killing the Younglings. This was really more a personal thing for me, rather than an actual flaw in the movie. I thought the scene of Anakin killing the Younglings was done well, with a remarkable amount of subtlety (not Lucas' strong suit). And I get from a narrative standpoint that it symbolizes Anakin's transformation to Vader (He kills kids, he's EEEEEVIIILLLL!!!). The problem I have is that, as the father of a young child, I can no longer derive entertainment value from the death of children. Again, purely personal, but I figured I'd mention it.

And finally (as this review has gone on almost longer than the movie)...

Ian McDiarmid's Acting. As Chancellor Palpatine, I thought he was excellent. The way he worms his way into Anakin's confidence, slowly bringing him around to the ideals of the Sith was very well done. Once he starts his fight with Mace Windu, however, his acting goes so far over the top it defies description. No, really. No amount of description could possibly convey just how awful his acting is once he becomes the Emperor. Much of it comes across as unintentional comedy, and had most of the theater laughing.

And that's it. I could probably go on, but I'll just close by saying that while I thought it was the best of the prequels, and I did actually enjoy watching it, it had many of the same flaws as the other two, and I'm really just happy it's finally all over. And I didn't want to feel this way. I wanted to wholeheartedly enjoy these films. I know I couldn't possibly have enjoyed them the same way I enjoyed the originals as a kid, but I know for a fact that even kids today don't enjoy the prequels the same way they enjoy the originals. At least, not my kid (and she LOVES the originals), nor any of my friends' kids. And we've all made a point of not prejudicing our children against the prequels. We've tried to get the kids to watch them, and the interest just isn't there. At all. So it's not just the bitter ramblings of a disgruntled fanboy. The prequels are pale imitations of the originals, and they should have been so much more than that.