Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith
Also reviewed by:
Noah K.
See also:
Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope (Uncle Cliff)
Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope (Special Edition) (Uncle Cliff)
So strongly felt I that after seeing this new Star Wars film that everyone would feel the same way I did about it, that I almost wasn’t going to write a review at all. All the bad stuff felt so obvious (and you pretty much know what it's gonna be – the usual suspects of dialogue, acting, blah blah blah), BUT...turns out I was alone. All alone. Seeing everyone else seemed to love the film bar I, I felt obliged to jot down some key points as something of a historical document, in case I die and the world is rid of the one person who thinks Episode III: Revenge of the Sith sucks.
When the film begins with its familiar pan down from the scrolling prologue it's easy to gasp as for a moment you follow two small spaceships as they fly over a single cruiser to reveal an epic space war taking place, the scale of which you’ve never seen before in a Star Wars film, or possibly any sci-fi film – ever. "Holy Shit," I thought in those first few seconds, "I’m gonna have to see this thing again ASAP just to be able to take everything in". Every inch of the frame was busy with action. And that became the problem of this film for me. It’s all too busy. And it seems the flashing lights and pretty colours have distracted everyone from seeing that the film is just another poor bland pretty-darn-uninspired Star Wars prequel.
This film is so busy that it has ADD. There’s 40,000 different types of ships flying around this movie like Lucas just had to purge every idle design that had been lying around Lucasfilm for the last 30 years. Droids dispatch droids who dispatch droids. (There are so many different droids and aliens in this I got to wondering how exactly the Empire finds all these human-looking dudes to man the Death Star in the latter films? Where have they been hiding?) It’s all seriously over-the-top louder, flasher, stupider action – which is the door Lucas obviously thinks CG opened for him. And he does it just because he can. Why have one ship flying around when you can have thousands?
It all lacks the consistency and the simplistic beauty of the original films. This new trilogy is Coruscant while the original is Tatooine. And no, the transition between the trilogies is not pulled off well like people are saying. By the time we get to the end and we see a few 'retro' designs (familiar ships etc from the original trilogy) they jar badly to the rest and just point out how pointless so much of the CG detail in Lucas’s vision actually is.
And a huge lump of the CG is bad, bad, bad. At least with his puppets there were no expectations but after his claims with CG he deserves to get crucified for some of the half-finished jobs here. Obi Wan’s fight-on-the-move with General Grevious (why not just call him general Bad-Guy?) ranks with the worst CG I’ve seen.
The action scenes on the whole actually were, for the most part, horribly directed. The lightsabre fights were an uninspired blur lacking any of the beautiful choreography that accompanied anything Darth Maul related in Episode I . And without any emotional resonance they didn’t even stand up to the not flash, but nicely directed, Vader vs Luke battles in the latter episodes. And I never thought I’d say this: Too Much Lightsabre. By keeping the action minimal in the first two, Lucas managed to keep us hanging for the eventual showdowns, but in this whenever someone isn’t standing around talking about their feelings/politics they are whipping out the sabre. And the lava showdown at the end looks like it is going to make a really fun video game, what with the surfing down lava streams and hopping from platform to platform and all.
As a result of the first film being a long bland kiddie videogame, and wasting some valuable opportunities with poor characterisation in the second, Lucas seems to have given up trying to show us any of these character’s journey and figured, "Fuck it, let’s just have them say how they are feeling and changing". So every few minutes we get an update on Anakin’s 'turn' from his own mouth, and we all know how subtle Lucas can be with his dialogue. There was so much talk, talk, talk that Lucas didn’t know what to have his characters do whilst delivering it but pace around each other constantly. I’m not kidding. Every time people start talking they circle each other as the camera moves around trying to create the illusion something is actually happening. There’s so much ground he left to cover with his political “subterfuge” that after the action opening we’re treated to what felt like a full hour of little two-minute long scenes as we jump constantly back and forward from the jedi council talking about the threat of Palpatine, to Palps and Anakin talking about power, to Anakin talking to Padme about his feelings to blah blah blah, just shut the hell up. Every time we entered a 'talking' scene it wasn’t as if we had come into the middle of a discussion but it's as if the characters had been just standing around waiting silently for their shot to start.
Padme’s only role in this film is sitting on her couch waiting to be a sound board every time Anakin walks through the door to start bitching. I wasn’t expecting her to be a Leia like action role being preggers and all, but she has seemingly been stripped of all her political ambition and passion. In the others you got the feeling she was gonna to end up the mother of the rebellion or something, but turns out she was just a uterus for Anakin’s Midichlorian-filled force-juice. Lucas can’t write for women, or about women. The love dialogue was just as wince-worthy as Episode II which is a pity considering Anakin’s turn to the dark side ends up totally depending on the believability of their love.
The interesting thing about the reaction to this film is that people seem to love this one pretty much unconditionally. If someone finds out I didn’t like it they're like, "Why?" And if I tell them my key grievances everyone pretty much agrees with all of them – but still says they liked/loved it. I guess for everyone these things weren't enough to ruin the film but for me...for me it was like sitting through the crap waiting for these big moments to redeem it all – just to be even more disappointed with them (more on a fan-boy level than on a filmmaking level I suppose). Admittedly they pretty much lost me during 'the turning' scene. After that nothing in the film held any weight for me. I could have forgiven a lot if that was pulled off with a Tom Skerrit of believability.
Here I present Anakin’s descent to the dark side in a slightly simpler point form:
Episode I
• So annoying you know he’s gonna be evil
• Otherwise nothing
Episode II
• Dreams that Mum would die
• Mum dies
• Gets revenge
Episode III
• Dreams Padme dies
• Kills an unarmed bad guy because Palpatine says so
• Palpatine offers to teach him a new power that stops
people from dying
• Discovers Palpatine is evil
• Walks in on Mace Windu about to kill evil Palpatine
And this is the moment. He gets to choose. Yes, his turning comes down to a single choice.
Kill Palpatine and end the Sith, but wifey might die like dream.
Or kill Windu because Palpatine promises to help you save her.
So after making his choice he is riddled with guilt one second, then drops to his knees and bows to his new master and is given the name Darth Vader the next. He then kills all the Jedi, because y’know, why stop at one? And then, after all the shit hits the fan his wife still dies (from 'heartache' for crap's sake) and he ends up losing 80% of his body. Now you’d think if he was such a badass he would probably realise he got screwed and kick the crap through the Emperor for tricking him, but no, he just gives off the dodgiest scream in movie history (“Nooooooooo”) and it's water-under-the-bridge-let’s-build-a-Death-Star-together happy times.
The reviews are apologising for the film by saying, “But hey, we all know what needed to happen, so of course there’s no surprises,” but that’s exactly why people have been waiting for Lucas to come good with the prequels: because they wanted to see all the big moments they have been imagining for so long. And he fucks them all up. All the 'big moments' were a massive let down. Vader's big moment in the suit was totally ruined by the aforementioned ridiculously pussy yelp, while Palpatine’s physical revelation/transformation into the ugly Sith Lord ends up being completely stupid as the Emperor-to-be somehow becomes the comic relief of the film, laughing and cackling at everything like Mutley on crack, neutering his menace in the later films. Like Yoda, this is another character ruined by the need to show these guys 'in their prime'. I for one was happy when the Emperor was a scary looking old man who controlled the galaxy without moving a muscle on his throne. It only detracts from it all to have him now bouncing off the walls, lightsabre in hand. He looks, to be blunt, like an idiot. And as for the birth of the twins/death of Padme moment – she pops one out. “Leia," she says. Another pops out. “Luke”. She dies. Why we needed to see this at all I’m not sure. We know their fucking names. Why do we need a scene to explain that the previously unseen Bail Organa’s wife always wanted a girl?
The rest of the film just seemed like action filler. Wookies? Not needed at all. Still confused why they were there. Grevious? Waste of time. He was only included for the “cool bad guy” factor except – wasn’t. Luckily the humor in the film is the real highpoint. Apart from the hilarious Emperor Mutley you’ll be in for a real treat if you love droid humour. They have such sass! And they’re robots! Jar-jar makes a cameo but keeps his mouth shut. I actually hoped I would get to see him step in shit one more time, but alas…
In essence this film caps off what we were all thinking about the prequel series deep down at some stage at least: Unnecessary. Everything was so much cooler when you didn’t know that Darth Vader built C3PO and that Yoda and Chewbacca were best buds way back when. The galaxy sure seemed a whole lot bigger, and a whole lot more fucking interesting, that’s for sure.