Revenge of the Sith

We finally went out to see Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith tonight (Debbi wanted to see it with me, so I waited until after my Madison vacation to catch it). I wasn't wild about The Phantom Menace (although from my review at the time I thought it was better than my memory informs me now) nor Attack of the Clones. Revenge of the Sith has gotten pretty good reviews, though, with a few reviewers saying it's equal to or better than the original Star Wars.

It's not.

First of all, there's the title: "Revenge" suggests that the Sith are getting back at someone (presumably the Jedi) for a wrong they suffered in the past, but what this wrong was is never stated. Even to the Sith lord, the Sith mostly seem relegated to legend, other than his master. The Sith are simply making a big power grab, and the Jedi stand in their way. No revenge necessary. The title is misleading.

(Some folks have noted that other Star Wars backstory indicates that there is a clear element of revenge in the Siths' actions. But I don't give a hoot about backstory from books, comics or cartoons. If it ain't in the movies, then it don't count.)

The real problems with the film boil down to two critical elements: The writing and the acting.

Only Ian McDiarmid (Chancellor Palpatine) and Ewan McGregor (Obi-Wan Kenobi) come out of this one with their acting reputations intact: McDiarmid is convincingly (if tediously) menacing, while I'm still impressed with McGregor's Alec Guinness performance. Hayden Christiansen (Anakin Skywalker) and Natalie Portman (Padmé Amidala) are both stiff as boards, demonstrating all the emotional range of a pair of grapefruit. Samuel L. Jackson's performance as Jedi master Mace Windu is amazingly unconvincing, which leads me to think that it's director George Lucas who's at fault for the weak performances. Nonetheless, there are many wince-worthy moments in the film.

Lucas as a writer is even worse. Of course, we can dispense with any illusions that Lucas is telling some grand story he's had tucked away in his head for over 25 years; he's clearly been making it up as he goes along. Heck, I don't even believe it was all his ideas; I think it was Empire Strikes Back co-writer Leigh Brackett who came up with the idea that Vader (Anakin) was Luke's father, and making Luke and Leia siblings was clearly grafted onto Return of the Jedi since it doesn't really make much sense in the context of its two predecessors. It's just a pretext for Han Solo to get the girl rather than Luke.

All of this is pretty clear from the prequel trilogy: The advanced technology of the Republic seems to lack ultrasounds, so Padmé doesn't know that she's carrying twins (something which Obi-Wan apparently didn't know either, in Empire). Obi-Wan tells Luke that his father was a great fighter pilot when he met him, but of course he was really only a boy. None of it hangs together.

Sith might have worked had it been the climax of a build-up to Anakin's fall, but instead it's pretty much just nightmares and greed which drive him over the edge and into the Sith lord's grasp. It doesn't help that other than Obi-Wan the Jedi are a completely unsympathetic lot, their supposed total selflessness leading them to marginalize Anakin and drive him from them. You'd think that a group supposedly in touch with their feelings would do better.

The balance of power between the Jedi and the Sith is not really believable. How powerful is Palpatine, anyway? He takes out three of four Jedi masters without half trying, which seemed completely ridiculous to me; they should have pretty much had him for breakfast, especially considering how Darth Vader dispatched him in Jedi. His plan to get rid of the Jedi was pretty believable, although one wonders why he waited so long. To entrap Anakin, I guess, although it hardly seemed worth it.

Ultimately, though, Sith and the whole prequel trilogy is a story without a soul. Anakin starts off as a pretty good kid, and then goes bad because, well, life happens and he can't handle it, I guess. This more-or-less undercuts Lucas' longtime contention that the series is about Luke finding redemption for his father. Luke is his own man with his own story, who remains ignorant of his father's fall from grace. Luke simply has a stronger sense of right and wrong, and gets more support from his friends. Anakin was "the chosen one" (chosen by whom?) and just can't handle it. Maybe the moral is that when you're handing the power of the Jedi to a young trainee, you should screen your candidates a little more carefully.

Good points? Well, the special effects are brilliant as usual. They're not always employed all that well - for instance, the lightsaber fights are terribly choreographed, so it's often impossible to figure out what the heck is going on - but they're typically very pretty to look at, and impression from a technical standpoint. General Grievous - despite the silly moniker - is pretty entertaining. I also like Obi-Wan's "horse" when attacking the separatist camp. And there are a few amusing moments with R2-D2 and C-3PO, although the pair are pretty much irrelevant to the trilogy and should have been excised.

Overall, Revenge of the Sith is a muddle, full of murky motivations, weak acting, and poor plotting. It's not a complete loss and is watchable as light popcorn action entertainment. But Lucas really should have just handed an outline to a decent scriptwriter and handed the reins over to a solid director and let them make sense of the whole thing. Because I think he had a general idea of what he wanted to accomplish, but he's just not a good enough director to make it happen.