I have purposely stayed away from the reviews by professionals because I wanted to walk into Star Wars III: Revenge Of The Sith as blank a slate as possible. I wanted to allow my joy as an eight year-old at seeing Star Wars IV: A New Hope to temper my disappointment at seeing Star Wars II: Attack Of The Clones more than 20 years later. And now that I’ve seen ROTS, I’m ready to say what I think.
Here there be spoilers
You have been warned
George Lucas had an amazing vision with Star Wars IV: A New Hope. He took a classic monomyth plot and blew it up to a galactic scale. Using cinematic conventions from the 1950s serials, he made the search for self and a purpose-driven life grounded in unshakable morality a spectacle for the ages. And then he went and nearly ruined it all by making the three movies that are the backstory for what is in the larger consciousness “Star Wars.”
I’ll not go into the farce that was Phantom Menace or the debacle that was Attack Of The Clones, or going even farther back the inexplicable stumble that was Return Of The Jedi. Instead, I’d like to talk about both the good and the bad of Revenge Of The Sith.
This movie’s main downfall isn’t George Lucas’ fabulous imagination and utter inability to write dialogue. It’s not the wooden performances he elicits from actors that I know have a lot more talent than they are allowed to access in this film. It’s not the fact that he can grasp broad universal themes but doesn’t understand the character arc.
This movie’s main downfall is the fact that it tries to be so earnestly topical.
Star Wars IV: A New Hope came along at a time when America desperately needed big stories and heroes. Lucas was reportedly surprised at how much the audiences identified with Han Solo, thus ushering in the era of the anti-hero, rather than with Luke, the purported moral center and main character of the then-triology. America now finds itself in a cultural time and space where fear reigns supreme; one where it seems that civil rights, morality, and public debate are owned by the person or group that shouts the loudest. As a people we desperately need someone to pull back the curtain and show us that there is no great and powerful Oz, that what we’re being told is truth is merely an illusion, that there is a broad, long-lasting morality that transcends the debates about the war, about America’s place in an ever-shrinking world, that transcends the furor over “gay marriage” and the right to die. And maybe Lucas’ simplistic rendering of the death of democracy and the way anger and fear can blind you to what you know in your heart is right will open the door a crack. But I doubt it.
Why, you ask, do I doubt that today’s cynical audiences won’t be as moved by the message Lucas is trying so earnestly to send with this film? During the showing of ROTS I attended the audience actually laughed during Anakin’s revelatory moment, the moment during which he realizes that his passage to the dark side can not be undone.
There are a lot of good things about Revenge Of The Sith. The effects are mind boggling. Once again we’re treated to stunning alien landscapes (I wish we’d gotten more than a battle-zippy look at the Wookie home world), fascinating alien creatures, and technology that makes the geeky kid in me want to start building models again.
The sound design, too, that we’ve come to take so much for granted, is a warm aural blanket, enveloping you in the film’s world without making you concious of it (Ben Burtt is a sound effects genius).
A lot of so-called “minor” characters finally get their due: Yoda proves once again to be the Master of the Masters; R2-D2 gets his own chance to fulfill his promise. And we do get to see Anakin’s transition from Skywalker to Vader. The hows of many questions raised by the original three films are definitely illuminated. But these hows are a long time coming and are sapped of any real dramatic tension simply because the culmination of each of the climatic battles is a foregone conclusion.
For these things, for the hopelessly wooden dialogue and direction, for the utterly ridiculous character arc given to Padmé, and for making us wait nearly 30 years for something that is, ultimately, not quite satisfying, despite the fact that I wanted to be able to rate it a five, despite the fact that I wanted to be utterly blown away, I can only give this film three popcorns out of five.
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