Review: Star Wars--Revenge of the Sith

The general consensus about this movie is correct: it is a good picture, with caveats.

(I suppose I should issue a spoiler warning here, just to be fair. If you haven't seen the picture yet, go watch it and come back. The post will be waiting.)

The first thing this movie does is make clear how unnecessary the last two movies were. All the plot threads worth following, concerning Anakin's corruption and the fall of the Republic, are covered in this one. Star Wars fans may be best advised to think of the series as a tetralogy. Overall, the movie is fun, well paced, with many scenes that were striking and memorable. There's even a nifty irony concerning the death of Senator Amidala. By nifty, I mean nifty by Lucas standards. The Greeks and Shakespeare did it long ago, and much better, than Lucas does. Even so, it is a welcome move.

The opening scene, the battle to retrieve Chancellor Palpatine, has been much praised, but not entirely deservedly. It struck me as too busy, falling prey to Lucas's habit of stuffing the frame with every possible CG object his elves at ILM can design. CG is best when it isn't quite so obvious. Instead of worrying about the fate of Anakin and Obi-Wan, I was analyzing the art direction. It's a pity that in this sequence of STAR WARS movies, Lucas often forgets that leaving things out is sometimes more important than putting them in. This habit of crowding the frame occurs throughout the movie, and sometimes made it hard to concentrate on the story.

Once we got past the space flight and the slaughter of, gee, it must have been hundreds, of hapless droids, the scene moves to a saber duel among Obi-Wan, Anakin, and Francisco Scaramanga--I mean--Count Dukoo. It is here, in a well done scene (by my count, the first well-done scene in the series), that Anakin's corruption begins. Lucas was smart to bring back Ian McDirmid to play Palpatine. His silky voice and manner serve him well in his portrayal of an insidious Sith Lord and as a seducer of Anakin. The scenes between them are well-handled, and are among the best in the film.

Ewan McGregor also deserves a good deal of credit here. He's loosened up, and has a humor that makes him attractive. I wanted him to succeed and I worried about him when he was in danger, even though I know his character makes it to the next film. That isn't an easy effect to achieve, and I give him credit for having done it.

Also, unlike the other films, I counted no superfluous characters in Star Wars Episode III. Everyone, including background characters like Bail Organa, get something to do that advances the story.

All these things added up to a more involving film experience than Lucas's last two pictures combined. He didn't get everything right, but he did get some big things right. The story accomplishes something and arrives somewhere, I root for the good characters and hate the bad ones, every part of the tale and every character has a sufficient reason to be where it is, and the story sticks more or less to what's possible (in STAR WARS terms) and leaves miracles alone.

That said (there's always a that said):

The scenes between Anakin and Amidala still play badly, and created several narrative problems. The dialog between them is forced and unnatural--much weaker than the banter in other areas of the story. Did Lucas force Tom Stoppard to leave these scenes alone? Not only are they flawed, but they present the characters inconsistently. Amidala comes to Anakin with the "wonderful" news that she is pregnant, then without motivation becomes worried and asks Anakin "What are we going to do?" as if the "wonderful" news were cause for panic. Anakin claims, at the beginning of the picture, that he doesn't care who knows he's married to Amidala. The arrangement seems to bother Amidala as well, and her commitment to it appears to be inconsistent. It's unclear throughout the relationship who wants to keep the secret, or what's at stake for their relationship if the secret comes out.

Another problem: Anakin and Amidala live together on Coruscant. When Anakin first sees her after rescuing the Chancellor, he runs over and kisses her. Now the other politicians have left the frame, but we're dealing with public figures here. Have they no tabloids in the Galaxy Far, Far Away? Are there no reporters checking on who's staying with her in her home, which is presumably the property of Naboo? For a couple supposedly keeping an important secret, they don't seem to be trying too hard. And given that, why were the Jedi so obtuse about it? You didn't need the force to figure these two out.

Ironically, by driving Anakin to keep his relationship secret, the Jedi forced him into the arms of Chancellor Palpatine. If he'd felt comfortable fessing up in front of Yoda, a lot of suffering might have been avoided. Besides, it's hard to believe they'd boot the "chosen one" out of the Jedi order for such an infraction, especially with an unidentified Sith Lord out there who might take him on as a pupil. Wouldn't they more likely train him to keep his emotions in their proper perspective? I don't know, but that would seem the sensible Jedi approach. Normally, I like stories where responsibility for grand failures is shared, but in this case, a large part of the Jedis' problem seems to stem from their handling Anakin so stupidly that he can't help but fall to the dark side.

I also queston two choices Lucas made about the introduction of Vader in the black armor. The first choice was to make him walk badly when he first steps away from the table. Lucas explained that he wanted the walk to be awkward because Vader was still getting used to the equipment. This is a seemingly sensible answer but it has two problems. First, it's already been established in this universe that people get used to their prostethic limbs rapidly. Second, the scene resembles a similar scene in not only FRANKENSTEIN, but in YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN. I heard a lot of giggling in the audience when Darth Vader first stepped out, and I doubt that's the reaction Lucas wanted. The second questionable choice was Lucas's insistence on having someone cry out, "NOOOOOO!" In this case it was Vader, and it felt forced. I could almost hear Lucas's pen scratching a long string of Os on the his legal pad. It threw me right out of the moment and made me chuckle.

Lucas used other lines he's used before as well. "I have a bad feeling about this" and "This is where the fun begins" among them. That move was already self-conscious and awkward two films ago, and I wish Stoppard had convinced him to cut it out. Lucas may like them, but they hurt his stories because they make them feel like stories instead of real action.

I questioned the use of Order 66 in the movie, partly because I thought such an order might give at least some Stormtroopers pause. They are, after all, being asked to fire on their own side. The gunnery captain questioned such an order, and indeed refused it, in PATHS OF GLORY. (He demanded that such an order come in writing from his General, so that he would not be held responsible for the slaughter of his own men.) Wouldn't at least some Stormtroopers have done the same? I know. I know. The cloning process is supposed to make them all reasonably pliant. Still, they did seem to have emotions. Obi-Wan even joked with one of them.

More significant than that for me is that because Palpatine's order has an official designation which the Stormtroopers understand without explanation, (unlike the B-52 pilots in DR. STRANGELOVE, these guys don't have to open sealed order packets to understand what they're being asked to do) large numbers of Stormtroopers must have known all along that it was possible they'd be ordered to kill the Jedi. How the hell was this kept secret from the Jedi for all this time? With so many Stormtroopers out there, you mean to tell me that no one ever blabbed for all the years of the war? No security is that perfect, especially not in close infantry situations. Palpatine may have been able to conceal his own dark side affiliation, but how could ordinary stormtroopers conceal such a thing from the Jedi for a sustained period of time?

Finally, the key scene where Mace Windoo and Palpatine accuse each other of treason during a saber duel in front of Skywalker struck me as weak. I thought the dialog in the scene clanged, but also I thought that, given the way Anakin slaughtered Dukoo and threatened, at one point, to kill the Chancellor for his Sith leanings, the choice he makes to attack Mace Windoo was curious. Mace Windoo said that leaving Palpatine alive was too dangerout s, the precise justification Skywalker used when he beheaded the unarmed Count Dukoo. This didn't occur to him? I couldn't understand how he worked his decision out, or why he failed to see that Palpatine was playing possum when he claimed he was defenseless. (Besides, how was he defenseless? Just because he'd lost his lightsaber? Anakin surely knows that Jedi have powers beyond that, including the lightning and choke attacks. They're always armed, even when they're not.) I had to assume that selfish motives concerning Amidala shifted the balance, but the scene should have made that more explicit than it did.

And that's lunch for me, people. I give REVENGE OF THE SITH a qualified recommendation. It's strange, but in many ways it struck me less as the work of an older, experienced artist than that of an undiciplined newcomer who has only begun to figure out how storytelling works. If I didn't know that George Lucas is, in fact, in his 60s, I'd say he's finally shown evidence of future promise.