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Star Wars Episode 3: Revenge Of The Sith

Film // Jim // 22nd May 2005

Lets get the cards on the table at the start. While I am probably not what could be described as a major Star Wars fan, I have always been quite into the whole thing. I think Star Wars is great, The Empire Strikes Back even more so and Return Of The Jedi, well, it could have been better.

Anyway, like most people of my age I was really excited by the prospect of the new trilogy, although slightly confused by the logic of doing a series of prequels where everyone knows what is going to happen.

So The Phantom Menace comes out. Absolutely everyone goes. Opinion is split into “Jesus, what a load of shite” and “I thought it was OK actually”. I belonged in the second camp. While not a patch on the original films I quite enjoyed it and it had a really iconic scary villain. “Anyway,” I told myself, “it is really just setting things up for the next one, which will be really good.”

Attack Of The Clones comes out. Most people go. In some ways it is much better than Phantom Menace, Christopher Lee is in it, the special effects are amazing, that Jar-Jar thing is barely to be seen and Natalie Portman’s clothes get ripped. Unfortunately there are large segments where things slow down to a crawl, the dialogue is clunky and the acting on the agonising side of painful. Sitting through the romantic segments is like having all of your teeth pulled out individually without the benefits of a local anaesthetic.
“Don’t be negative,” I told myself, “this is all necessary scene setting for the last one which is going to be really, really good.”

Revenge Of The Sith came out last week so I along with a companion known only (due to his continued wish to avoid the attention of the child support agency) as “Walshy” troop over to the Coventry Skydome to see it. We’ve booked tickets for the midday showing, but there was no point, there must be less than fifty people here, all male, all highly expectant. A large, scary man at the front is loudly commentating on the adverts and trailers, fortunately he shuts up once the film begins.
“Here we go,” I think, “I really want this film to be great, I’m sure it won’t let me down”.

Things start well, all huge epic special effects as a daring rescue mission is played out against the backdrop of a massive orbital battle. We are treated to the much mentioned “dark” direction of the film as a major character has bits lopped off prior to a cold-blooded decapitation, plus we are introduced to a new villain - a homicidal robot with a nasty cough (yes, really).

Episode III: Epic special effects, robot with a nasty cough

After a bit of dull space politics, the film diverges into two streams, Obi Wan Kenobi (played by Ewan McGregor with an even bushier beard and plummier accent to match) is sent off to track down the phlegm-ridden robot nutter. Meanwhile Anakin Skywalker (Hayden Christensen) is left to get all conflicted, lovesick and turn to [dramatic pause] the dark side becoming [another dramatic pause] Darth Vader.

This is where things go downhill, although the McGregor sections are action packed and generally quite good, the rest is really hard going. There are (seemingly) endless scenes of Anakin and his missus, Padme (Natalie Portman) whingeing on about being in love and the nature of politics in space. At this point the film resembles nothing so much as an episode of Crossroads, except with some really nice scenery. The acting is stilted and unconvincing and the dialogue would be laughable if it wasn’t so bad.

Anakin and Padme: Whingeing, nice view

This trend continues through the political manipulation that eventually corrupts Anakin, the only respite being Ian McDiarmid being all Machiavellian and eeevil as the Emperor-to-be Palpatine. It is a real shame to see such great actors as Macgregor, Portman and Samuel L. Jackson struggling with the overly mannered and stiff lines that they are given to trot out with the utmost seriousness.

I’ve heard that Christensen is actually much better than his wooden performance in Attack Of The Clones would have you believe. However he doesn’t do himself any favours here, looking so uninterested in Portman that you wonder how they have managed to conceive children, while his descent into eeevil is about as believable as one of those e-mails you get trying to sell you pills to grow a twelve inch cock.

To be fair he isn’t helped by a plot line which seems to take hours, yet could probably be summarised as:

Anakin: “I’m a bit worried about the missus having the kids, I hope she’ll be OK”

Palpatine: “Really?”

Anakin: “Yeah, I’m well stressed about it. Plus I’m having a bit of a hard time over at work. They all think you are a twat by the way.”

Palpatine: “Hippie Bastards, I’ve never liked them myself, you know.”

Anakin: “...Yeah, well... I don’t know, I’m so confused”

Palpatine: “Tell you what, why don’t you come and work for me?”

Anakin: “Weeell, I don’t know about that...”

Palpatine: “All you need to do is kill all of your mates in a kind of genocidal purge and then wipe out a load of other people for no adequately explained reason in a brutal rage. Then there is a possibility of an outside chance that I might be able to tell you how to potentially save the wife from any childbirth complications, but it is an outside chance”

Anakin: “What are the hours like?”

Palpatine: “Terrible, but you do get a snappy title and the health insurance coverage is amazing”

Anakin: “You’ve got a deal! I’ll be off to slaughter the younglings then. Hope they haven’t left that pesky CCTV switched on in the office.”

Once the genocidal purge begins and the Catch-22 esque “Order 66” is put into operation the film does perk up and gets all spectacular again. Ultimately we know that Obi Wan is going to put paid to the newly corrupted Darth, personally I was pleasantly surpassed by how nasty the eventual fate of the Anakin/Vader character turned out to be. There is also a superficial stab at political allegory with the Emperor engaging in Bush-esque scare tactics and warmongering to assume total power, interesting, but hardly George Orwell.

Unfortunately just as it seems that the film has redeemed itself, it plunges into the nadir of the entire series as the last ten minutes are spent hurriedly joining the dots between the two trilogies in a clumsy and horrendously disappointing manner:

- Yoda has a bit of a crack at the Emperor but drops his stick and therefore decides “Exile into, go I must”
- Padme has twins which she rapidly names Luke and Leia, then although “there is nothing medically wrong with her” she dies, due to “losing the will to live”, despite just having given birth to a pair of healthy looking kids.
- Yoda, Obi Wan and Jimmy Smits(for fucks sake) convene a sort of social services committee and decide what to do with the children.
- It turns out that Jedis can train themselves to communicate with other dead Jedis however this is best learned over long periods of solitude while protecting oblivious children on desert planets.
- In a phenomenally lazy afterthought, memories are wiped.

So despite the exciting bits and the absolutely amazing special effects, this film is a final kick in the balls for Star Wars aficionados who have made excuses for the previous two instalments. For all the technical wizardry, there is nothing to match the excitement and tension of the Death Star trench run or the visual wonder of the snow bound battle in The Empire Strikes Back.
The humour and friction between Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher and the unfairly maligned Mark Hammill shines like a beacon against the leaden, overly serious acting that has characterised the prequels.

We can only hope that the rumours/threats to the effect that George Lucas is going to go back and remake the original trilogy in line with the more recent films are no more than a cruel joke.

I’ll leave the final word to “Walshy”, a real fan who seems to watch all of the films at least once a month and had already stated prior to the screening that he would enjoy the film no matter what. Half way through the movie, during a particularly trying scene involving Anakin and Padme discussing the dogmatism of political structure and the blindness of their love, he stood up announcing:

“This is so weak. I’m going for a slash”.

There can be no more damning criticism.

Links from the light side...

Star Wars @ the Wikipedia

Stupidly comprehensive reource on everything you could ever want to know about every single aspect of the whole Star Wars universe.

The development of Star Wars

The development of the story and script for the original film.

T'Bones Star Wars Universe

Everything for the Star Wars Enthusiast, it says here

HoloNet News

Fictional news web site that pretends that Star Wars is in fact real. Even the adverts.

Links from the dark side...

The Nitpickers Guide to Star Wars

Sci Fi Geek pedantry of the highest order

The Star Wars Holiday Special

George Lucas' guilty secret, it had Bea Arthur in it, you know. Check out the wierd wookie fantasy song. Ouch

Porn Wars

It had to happen - don't blame me