Before seeing Star Wars III: Revenge of the Sith, Star Wars fans (and casual fans) want the answer to two, related questions. First, is Revenge of the Sith better than its two predecessors, Star Wars I: The Phantom Menace and Star Wars II: Attack of the Clones? Second, is Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith a worthy prequel to the original trilogy? The answer to both questions is "yes", but the answer to the second question must be qualified. Star Wars fans will have to look beyond the obvious flaws in the script and performances (as well as logical inconsistencies between the two series) before getting to "yes".

After two inferior prequels which followed Anakin Skywalker from boy to apprenticeship as a Jedi Knight and young adulthood, including a romantic relationship and secret marriage to Padme Amidala (Natalie Portman), Star Wars III: Revenge of the Sith covers the fateful events that inexorably and inevitably lead Anakin Skywalker (Hayden Christensen) to the Dark Side of the Force, to his transformation into the half-man, half-machine, black-helmeted Darth Vader, Emperor Palpatine's (Ian McDiarmid) much-feared enforcer. Together, Darth Vader and Emperor Palpatine rule the Galactic Empire with unbending, dictatorial authority.

With the events in the original trilogy already known to even casual fans, a tragic dimension attaches itself to the central characters (simply put, knowing more than they do places us in a superior position).

The Galactic Republic falls, the Galactic Empire rises, with Palpatine as autocratic ruler. The Jedis are defeated, only to rise again with Luke Skywalker twenty years later. Obi-Wan and Yoda survive, but go into decades-long exile from the center of power.

Darth Vader's saga continues, but no longer as tragic hero, but as villain (Luke becomes the hero in the second trilogy, sans flaws). Balance will be restored to the Force, but not as Yoda or Obi-Wan expected or predicted.

Coming full circle, George Lucas gives us, on balance, a satisfying conclusion to the prequel trilogy. The storytelling is better, tighter, more focused than that found in the first two scenes. Lucas obviously marshaled all the financial and technical resources at his command. It's one spectacular space battle after spectacular ground battle after spectacular space battle, a credit both to George Lucas's visual imagination and the special effects staff at Industrial Light & Magic. But therein lies a major problem with Revenge of the Sith. Lucas shows little restraint in the action scenes, preferring epic (read: video game) spectacle over intimate, human drama. The repeated scenes and shots of CGI armies battling to the virtual death leads to sensory overload and becomes a symptom of Lucas' distrust in his own storytelling abilities.

Lucas' penchant for stilted, underwritten dialogue is still in evidence (as are the uniformly wooden performances, with one or two exceptions), but it's also clearly evident that Anakin's (final) fall from grace meant more to him than any of the events covered in the first two films. Lucas still can't write romantic scenes. They are, in short, risible (Christensen and Portman have my sympathies), but the Palpatine-Anakin scenes are among the best in the trilogy. Ultimately, Lucas is able to wring a surprising amount of pathos from the final confrontation between Anakin and Obi-Wan, as Obi-Wan struggles with his conflicted feelings toward his former apprentice.

Besides the more evident flaws in the script and performances, Lucas was forced to tie, or attempt to tie, the loose ends between the two series. Given the events in the original trilogy occur later chronologically, Lucas had to explain, or explain away, potential inconsistencies between the two series (and within the later trilogy), e.g., Luke and Leia's parentage (she says, at one point, that she remembers her mother), and most importantly, Obi-Wan's decision not to perform a coup-de-grace when he has the opportunity. In Revenge of the Sith, Obi-Wan's decision might be guided by either his belief that Anakin is dead, or his inability to eliminate his former apprentice (but instead leaving him in unimaginable pain and anguish). Of course, Force powers are also an ongoing, unresolved issue. Among other abilities, Jedis and Siths have the ability to throw large objects at each other, but at crucial times, seem unable or unwilling to use that power. The extent of what Jedis can and do feel, whether reading emotions in each other or potential adversaries, also seems to wax and wane, for no apparent reason.

And, importantly, for the second trilogy, why do Padme and Anakin know only about one child and not two? Why does Anakin, the so-called Chosen One, not sense the truth about his children (they're presumed dead) or his role in Padme's death (and the Emperor's obvious lie)? This last question leads to probably the most unintentionally funny reaction shot in the entire film (not what Lucas hoped for, presumably). On a deeper, more troubling level, why, after essentially committing genocide, is Anakin Skywalker ultimately granted absolution for his acts? This last question, of course, is one for the entire series, and not the prequels. Some may see this discussion as overanalytical (and possibly, joyless), but for a series of films embedded so deeply in our popular culture, close analysis is practically inevitable (and predictable).

A word about politics and Revenge of the Sith.

Some, film critics and pundits alike, have attempted to treat Revenge of the Sith as politically typical. More accurately, some see Revenge of the Sith as a thinly veiled critique of the current resident of the White House. While Revenge of the Sith does contain one line ("You're either with me or my enemy") that uncomfortably echoes a line uttered by President Bush after 9/11, the prequels were in production long before President Bush was elected. If anything, Palpatine's usurpation of power have more distant, historical parallels, to Nazism in Germany (Hitler took power legitimately, through constitutional means) or, more loosely, to the end of the Roman Republic and the rise of the Roman Empire.

Here, an old adage seems fitting: good politics does not make good art, or more accurately, a film, even one with the potential to reach millions of people, shouldn't be judged by whether you agree or disagree with its politics.

Flaws, questions, and issues aside, however, Lucas comes close to redeeming the prequel trilogy from forgettable mediocrity. In time, the Star Wars saga will be likely remembered as a trilogy (the original trilogy, that is) plus one, Revenge of the Sith.

© Mel Valentin, 22nd May, 2005

Review by Friday & Saturday Night Critic - 9/10

“Star Wars Episode III:  Revenge of the Sith” is a series of magnificent setpieces and images connected by a great sense of foreboding and scenes of clumsy dialogue.  That’s dogged the “Star Wars” prequels every step of the way.  Creator George Lucas began the prequels with a list of things he needed to accomplish in order to tie everything new together with everything old.  We have the most fun when he strays from his cosmic to-do list and the least fun when he seems intent on appeasing dateless fanboys with his perfect circle.  The product of the former intent is the enjoyable “The Phantom Menace” and most of “Revenge’s” best interludes.  The latter leads to the tedious “Attack of the Clones” and the stretch near “Revenge’s” end when we feel Lucas having to take care of vast, dramatically unnecessary bits of business.  Do we really need to see Luke and Leia being named?  No, we can figure that out just fine.

The big draw of the “Star Wars” films—their “main character,” if you will—has never been a person or a thing, but has always been the universe in which they are set.  Now that universe far, far away is back in a big way, in all the ominous colors of Halloween:  orange, black, and neon green.  It’s not just a backdrop where disconnected characters can yammer and yammer, like in “Episode II:  Attack of the Clones,” but a thrilling, bustling playground, where they can climb and jump and fight.  All the “Star Wars” films have been teeming with life, details, and little throwaway visual treats.  In the week before “Revenge’s” release, I was surprised by how much I was looking forward to returning to that far-off galaxy, and I was not disappointed.

The tone of “Revenge of the Sith” is something wonderful:  it is a tragic melodrama, whose sadness will haunt you for days, yet it is not above poking fun at itself.  Everything is so grim, yet the movie is exuberant instead of plodding.  I was so engaged that I wanted to re-watch “Episodes IV, V,” and “VI” just to confirm that everything turns out okay.  What playthings we are for the gods, who will grant us joy only after the deaths of hundreds of thousands!  Lucas tells the dark arc of Anakin Skywalker in shadows, silhouettes, and some of his most conscientious direction.  Even the sword battles seem more artful; we focus on the blur of the combatants’ light sabers and the human shapes they create, and there is beauty in watching two beams swing at each other from a great distance.  Plenty of limbs are lopped off in the course of “Revenge of the Sith” because, if you had a sword whose blade was a laser beam, this would probably happen to you a lot too.

Yet “Revenge of the Sith” is also an immensely silly movie, and I mean that in a good way.  Phrases like “War!” and “Evil is everywhere!” appear in the opening crawl.  Darth Vader gets to clench his fists and bellow “Noooo!!”  Androids are forever speaking in goofy voices and taking part in Keaton-esque slapstick routines that you’ll miss if you blink.  Villains have names like “Plagus,” “Maul,” “Sidious,” and “Grievous,” who is probably the first robot in movie history to have asthma.  After someone is put in the harshest hurt locker since “Passion of the Christ,” his wife asks “is he alright?”  People in “Star Wars” relish saying stupid things at inopportune moments; next to “is he alright?” the best line is “it’s a volcanic moon—you’ll be safe there!”  I laughed a lot with this movie.  For all the dark imagery and use of “Revenge” in the title, “Episode III” has a bounding, endearing tone.  In a weird, gloomy sort of way, it is both winsome and tragic, exactly what a movie like, say, “Constantine” is missing.

All “Star Wars” movies have been silly with straight faces.  In his 1977 review of the original film, Roger Ebert refers to the villains as a cross between “Nazis and sorcerers.”  These movies are sugar-fueled explosions of Saturday morning mayhem, where gaping plot holes and logic problems—answered by equally illogical responses—only serve to make the experience more charming.  Why is it that the heavies speak with English accents when no one else does?  Why does Princess Leia never miss?  Why does Padme’s chief bodyguard in “Episode I” say absolutely nothing positive, only uttering comments like “this is not a fight we can win?”  Where do all those pilots come from at the end of “A New Hope” when we’ve just seen all but three of them blown to smithereens?  And, of course, why do we hear so many exciting whooshing, ka-blammo noises when we all know you can’t hear anything in outer space?  (Actually, I know the official “Star Wars” answer to this quandary, and it is priceless.)  A running gag in the whole series, now truly glorified for the first time, is how many different wipes Lucas can use to go from scene to scene:  left to right, right to left, a circle, a square, a whole bunch of little squares, four rectangles, etc.

As for the talking that dragged down “Attack of the Clones”…thankfully, there’s not too much of it.  Lucas has a hold of some great ideas about politics and about how we all face the inner struggle of good and evil.  What he has is much more interesting than the simplistic “we’re good, they’re not, let’s kill ‘em all” approach of “Lord of the Rings.”  But he is unable to find a way to convey those ideas in a dramatically interesting fashion, or at least in a way that’s even close to the level of his space battles, chases, swordfights, and so on.  But “Revenge of the Sith” manages to sidestep the blah-blah-blah most of the time.  To paraphrase Anakin Skywalker on his road to madness, there is “more action and less deliberation.”

“Revenge of the Sith” hits the ground running.  We start immediately with a rescue mission that is equal parts space battle, swordfight, and slapstick.  We weave in and out of metal titans doing battle in the sky above the city-planet, then we scurry through the innards of a spaceship where constantly shifting gravity causes elevator shafts to turn into hallways.  Robots slip on oil, slap each other around, and duck for cover when they’re too loud.  The giant weapons blasting away from one ship to the next turn out to be glorified WWII-style cannon updated for the future, still firing only one shot at a time, still ejecting spent cartridges when they’re done.  Recently I saw a drawing from the early 1900s in which robots are pushing plows; in real life, tractors were created instead, but Lucas knows how much more Rube Goldberg delight there is in seeing a robot with a hoe.

Our fighting tour of the galaxy also includes a volcano planet, where we watch rock- and bridge-built structures collapse into the lava.  A man drags himself out of molten burning hell, screaming “I hate you!” to an old friend-turned-enemy.  Then it’s off for an impossible but beautiful moon in which asteroids seem to hover only a few dozen yards from the surface.  Other major locations include the deep pits of a mining world, populated by nosferatu, with lauchpads and terraces built of dinosaur bones.  Then there’s the jungle planet where we rejoin our old friends the Wookee.  Creepiest of all are two simultaneous sequences, one in which robots give new body parts to a screaming, disfigured man in a dungeon, another in which sterile white androids deliver twin babies.

“Revenge of the Sith” is the final chapter of the “Star Wars” prequel trilogy, filling in the backstory leading up to the original 1977 film, now fully christened “Star Wars Episode IV:  A New Hope.”  “Revenge” tells of the final corruption of Jedi knight Anakin Skywalker (Hayden Christensen) into the vicious Darth Vader, whom we all know and hate.  We also witness the ruthless Sith sorcerer Palpatine’s (Ian McDiarmid) coup-d'etat, transforming the benign Republic in to the oppressive Galactic Empire.  Chancellor Palpatine has created a fake war, thrown the galaxy into a state of panic, given himself all sorts of powers, and finally announces an Imperial reorganization in the name of peace and prosperity.  The only thing that stands in his way is the fourth branch of the Republican government:  the Jedi council.  To defeat it, he needs to convert Anakin to evil.  And then kill everybody.

“Revenge” follows the last few steps of Anakin’s descent, as he loses his faith in the Jedi and his eyes turn orange.  His mentors Obi-Wan (Ewan McGregor), Yoda (Frank Oz), and Mace Windu (Samuel L. Jackson) finally figure out what’s going on.  Meanwhile, Anakin’s cutie-pie wife Padme (Natalie Portman) is preggers with the two wee ones whom we, having watched “Star Wars,” “The Empire Strikes Back,” and “Return of the Jedi,” know will turn out to be Luke Skywalker and Princess Leia.  Luke will get in a motorcycle accident and Leia will get stoned.  No, wait, that’s real life.

A friend of mine mercifully described George Lucas as “not an actor’s director.”  Anakin’s character arc—from nice guy Chosen One to Total Asshole—is a mixed bag.  I like that he doesn’t seek power as an end in itself, like the Emperor, but sees fascism as a way to make everyone safer.  The whole Jedi vs. Sith thing is quite Jungian, and not just because there are archetypes of fathers, mothers, heroes, rebirth, redemption, and wise old men everywhere.  Jung’s basic guide to self-actualization is to come to terms with our dark side (shadow, anima, whatever).  We must confront and understand all our negative impulses if we are to become mature, functional beings.

Yet what is “Star Wars’” dread of “The Dark Side” if not the fear of taking that adult step?  The Sith are childish, selfish, and vengeful, but aren’t the Jedi equally childish in their refusal to admit to having any darker impulses?  The one-on-one battles between good and evil in “Revenge” may seem to stretch forever, but that’s because the battle between our inner impulses cannot be resolved.  It’s fitting that Yoda and the anti-Yoda (Palpatine) fight to a stalemate.  Good and evil can never truly conquer one another in this life.  Luke does not vanquish darkness from the galaxy.  He brings balance to The Force.  He touches evil in “Return of the Jedi,” but in his final victory he does not strike evil down, but throws his weapon away and accepts his fate.

In contriving a bridge between “Episode II” and “Episode IV,” “Revenge of the Sith” has so much ground to cover that, exciting as the setpieces are, we’re always on the verge of watching events and plot points being listed laboriously, scene going to scene.  “Attack of the Clones” suffers from this big time, but “Revenge” keeps things brisker, up until the aforementioned stretch nearing the end when I thought I would need Ritalin.  The length of time necessary for interstellar travel has always been wisely vague, although Emperor Palpatine makes a trip from city-planet to volcano-moon so quickly that we can’t help but imagine that the cutting between two different sword battles must be for dramatic effect, and not because they are concurrent.

Politically, the entire prequel trilogy seems to badmouth politicians and the political process while at the same time praising democracy and being terrified of its alternatives.  It’s old-style Jeffersonian vigilance, channeled from Capra’s “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” and Stone’s “JFK,” in which democracy is a fragile, infinitely valuable institution that will go stale without our constant attention.  Or this ambivalence may simply be another way that Lucas focuses on the tug-of-war between good and evil.

Besides Frank Oz’s readings for Yoda, there is still no great acting in this prequel.  The actors, who shot most of their scenes not on sets but in front of green screens, are adequate but never really feel at home.  Hayden Christensen, who was nominated for a Razzie for his portrayal of Anakin in “Attack of the Clones,” fares better this time, all glowers, dark looks, and loaded smiles, while Natalie Portman, once a woman of action and decision, is given nothing to do besides look worried, pregnant, and mope around her spectacular apartment on city-world.  Ewan McGregor knows that the Obi-Wan he must become is a man characterized primarily by sadness and regret.  Now that I think about it, Ian McDiarmid has always had a blast as Yoda’s evil opposite.  The meaner he gets, the more he sounds like a frog, and the more every syllable he chokes out seems like it should be accompanied by an eyeful of saliva.  As for composer John Williams, he is both at the top of his game and overscores every dialogue scene.

If you’re like me you’ve come to know and love, if at least not these characters, then the galaxy where they live.  The brave Jedi, whom we’ve followed for three movies, meet their inevitable demises, and it’s a bummer.  There’s no denying the pleasure of watching the circle complete, as the old-new is tied to the new-old.  How does “Revenge of the Sith” rank against the other prequels?  While it lacks the smooth forward momentum of “The Phantom Menace,” it deserves to be called my favorite for its campy heedlessness, nearly-religious imagery, and raw emotion.  Are any of the prequels on par with the original trilogy?  No, and you might be better off imagining or daydreaming your own backstory instead.  I’ve always thought that the devotion of the Imperials to their Empire is too fervent for a mere 20 year endeavor.  But, anyway, that doesn’t make the new movies bad.  They’re still “Star Wars.”

Oh yeah, and Jar-Jar Binks doesn’t say a damn thing this time around.

Click here to read "More Thoughts on 'Star Wars Episode III.'"
(c) May 19th, 2005