©2007 All Rights Reserved
v.1.0
I ritualistically revisited Star Wars (A New Hope... whatever) on May 25, 2007, thirty years to the day after it’s theatrical debut. Reviewing this movie, for me, is absolutely futile. I was totally and completely a member of the Star Wars Generation, being nine when this movie came out, and grew up with the sequels. To say I was a bit enthused with it all as a kid would be an understatement, and to say that the renaissance of interest that I experienced in my twenties (and early thirties) was just as intense would also be quite accurate.
What struck me the most during this particular viewing of the movie - my first in at least two years (possibly a record) - was how claustrophobic it all seems, particularly when compared to the prequel trilogy’s huge digital vistas. With the exception of some of the exteriors on the desert planet of Tatooine, Lucas’s camera is never more than a few yards away from the action, at most. Additionally, in virtually every interior scene, there is almost always a wall of some sort directly behind the actors, and these barriers are almost exlusively without windows. This is - of course - because Star Wars wasn’t a hugely budgeted film, and without computerized enhancement, the sets were pretty small. Whenever we see special effects shots using miniatures, we get nice wide angles, but whenever there are actors speaking on the screen, the sets are rather cramped, and without much depth or distance. Compare this to virtually any scene in the prequel trilogy, in which the actors move in (artificially) huge spaces, with many miles of scenery visible behind, next to, and around them. Everything feels more spacious and just much, much bigger - particularly on the city-planet of Coruscant, where every indoor scene seems to take place directly in front of a giant picture-window. This isn’t a criticisms of the original film, nor does the sense of a larger world save the otherwise mediocre prequels (in fact the constant activity in the ‘wider world’ often distracts from the immediate drama); this is simply the latest in a long series of observations about a piece of cinema that I have probably seen way too many times. And which I have written about far too much already (see my printed 1993-2000 fanzine Blue Harvest for more. Lots more.).
The 2004 DVD edition is a wonder to behold, visually, and contains a unique version of the film, updated even further from the 1997 “Special Edition” (which contained a few new scenes and some upgraded - and often distracting - special effects). However sparkling the film looks overall, it is frustrating to see and hear the producers of the film brag about all of the upgrades, but then to see blatant gaffes in a few of the things they claimed to have fixed: matte lines still exist around some of the spaceships, Luke’s lightsaber is the wrong color in one scene, and there is an audible hiss behind certain lines of dialogue (probably because some lines were original voice tracks from the movie set and others were dubbed in later - but this hiss can be fixed, and was actually less noticeable in all previous home video releases of Star Wars).
The disc has a rather disappointing set of bonus features for such a high-profile film. The trilogy of original Star Wars films comes as a set, with only one disc of extra material included in total. This disc contains a nice documentary called Empire of Dreams that covers the making of the film in an appreciable amount of detail, and which also includes snippets of some legendary deleted scenes, some screen-tests, some new interviews, and other goodies. Bits of these interviews are directly pasted into the commentary track of Star Wars (along with some additional material) to make an engaging narration that is well worth listening to. Unfortunately, there is a wealth of other material out there that the DVD producers chose not to include. Particularly, I would love to see some of the vintage ‘making of’ specials that appeared on television in the 1970s and 1980s - I believe there are a total of five documentaries out there covering the three original films, and all made between 1977 and 1984 (the first was The Making of Star Wars, starring R2-D2 and C-3PO; the last was From Star Wars to Jedi: the Making of a Saga which covered all three films). It’d be great to see this vintage material preserved and distributed. A collection of Star Wars characters appearing in various commercials and television shows would be cool to see as well - there are hundreds of hours of this stuff out there and a selection of the best of it wouldn’t be to hard to assemble and get rights to.
So yeah - Star Wars. Gotta love it.
Review by James Teitelbaum
©2007 All Rights Reserved
v.1.0
I loathe reviews (usually on amateur web sites) where the writer goes on and on about himself, or wastes my time with worthless anecdotes about how much some movie means to him. I don’t care. I want to read about the movie, not some stranger’s life. This review is the 250th one I have written for my own site, and I am going to finally break my own cardinal rule by indulging in some autobiography here. Your patience is appreciated.
I guess my claim to fame in the land of Star Wars geeks is not my having published a printed fanzine called Blue Harvest from 1993-2000, but rather that I was first in line for the debut of the new movie.
No, not The Phantom Menace in 1999, or Attack of the Clones in 2002, or even Revenge of the Sith in 2005. Frankly, I thought most of those people who camped out for months were kind of losers, but perhaps it takes one to know one. After all it is a movie, and gets shown thousands of times, unlike a sporting event or a concert that only happens once. I was completely over the idea of wasting days - or even mere hours - in a line for a movie by that point in my life. I didn’t wait in any of those lines for more than half an hour.
But, a long time ago....
After I became, let us say, a little bit interested in the Star Wars phenomenon beginning in 1977, my parents (I speculate) decided that encouraging my mania further by taking me to see The Empire Strikes Back in 1980 was probably not a good thing to do. I had all the action figures, the comic books, the trading cars, the novel - I knew the story inside and out, but I never actually saw the movie until it came to home video years later. What I had seen were the news reports on television about the people camped out in endless lines for tickets. By the time Return of the Jedi was released in 1983, I was just on the verge of discovering girls, and cars, and records, and the girls on the covers of records by The Cars, but there was just enough geek left in me to be pretty excited about Return of the Jedi coming out. Would Han Solo be rescued? Was Darth Vader really Luke Skywalker’s father, or was he lying? And who was ‘The Other’? I had to know. So did most of the world.
By this point, I had enough freedom and maturity to get on a bus and go to the movies myself, so I did just that. Remembering the long lines seen on television for the previous films, I decided to be first in line for the new one. I looked in the paper to see which theater had the first showing, the earliest one in the day. After being dropped at school at about 8:00 in the morning, I ditched out, got on the bus, and went to the movies. I was the only person there. I planted myself in front of the box office, and played Mattel Electronics Football II for four hours, breaking it up with eating my lunch and reading a bit. The news cameras didn’t come out (I guess in retrospect they were in California or New York or something - not Cleveland). A group of teenagers showed up a few hours later, but there was no real line until about an hour or so before the theater opened. I bought the first ticket in the county (Cuyahoga - basically Cleveland), and planted my proud little (or, really sorta big at the time) fourteen-year-old ass in what I deemed the best seat in the house.
Sat through the movie twice that day. I was nervous that I’d get kicked out between showings, but for some reason I didn’t, even though it was of course sold out. During the first time through the film, I was amazed at Jabba’s Palace, disappointed that The Other was Leia, and was - literally - on the edge of my seat during the speeder bike chase. All of my muscles were tensed up, and I leaned forward, spellbound at the amazing action on screen. Now... the Ewoks, well, I felt a little let down by them. Kinda kiddie stuff, more so than anything in the first two films.
The second time through there were two teenagers behind me, making fun of the movie. Hearing their running commentary, I realized that calling Jabba a ‘vile gangster’ in the opening text crawl of the film was a little melodramatic, and that Admiral Ackbar was indeed a little bit ridiculous... a big talking lobster from a race called the Mon Calamari (squid man?). But I didn’t let these hecklers spoil my enjoyment of the great lightsaber duel between Luke and Vader, or the exciting space battle, or the rescue of Han. That was really good stuff when you’re 14. But, yeah the Ewoks...
So, the 2004 DVD release looks great. George Lucas has added some more special effects to the movie, and further tinkered with it (after having done so once before, in 1997) but for the most part, the tweaks in this film (unlike the modifications to the 1977 original Star Wars) are improvements. There’s a pretty good commentary track on the disc.
The movie itself is tough for me to be objective about. But I will say this: it seems like it was dumbed down a notch and a half compared to the other two original Star Wars films, Leia as The Other was a cop-out, the new song performed in Jabba’s Palace in the 1997/2004 version sucks, Boba Fett died like a chump, and I am really still not sure if I buy into the Ewoks...
Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith
Starring: Ewan McGregor, Natalie Portman, Samuel L. Jackson,
Hayden Christensen, Christopher Lee, Ian McDiarmid, etc.
Review by James Teitelbaum
©2005 All Rights Reserved
v.1.4
Taken as a whole, the Star Wars films will never be accused of being truly great cinema, even if the first two films produced (A New Hope, 1977, and The Empire Strikes Back, 1980), make strong arguments in the series favor.
Nevertheless, the insanely rabid fan following that the six Star Wars films have generated, fueled by their undeniable impact on the cultural identity of at least two generations, give them a sort of immunity to being judged as harshly as any other film of their caliber would be.
The criticisms most often leveled at the Star Wars films - poor acting, bad dialogue, over-reliance on gratuitous special effects, blatant story inconsistencies - are for the most part true. In a way, the Star Wars series is not unlike the James Bond series, which produced four or five great movies during the 1960s and then a further fifteen(!) films that ranged from fairly decent to stinker. The few early, great entries in both the Star Wars and Bond series have made the subsequent entries bulletproof among most fans and many critics, beloved by all, no matter how low the depths that new installments sink to.
Even given the disappointments of the first two films of the Star Wars prequel trilogy (The Phantom Menace, 1999,and Attack of the Clones, 2002), George Lucas could still reasonably crank out a third trilogy of films to accompany the existing two trilogies, and people would still go to see them simply based on the eternal merits of A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back. This isn't to be, however: George has frequently and publicly claimed that the new Star Wars film, Revenge of the Sith, the sixth to be filmed (and the third in the Star Wars universe chronology) is the final word - upcoming cartoons and live action television series notwithstanding.
Critical analysis of Revenge of the Sith is hopeless. Any reviewer who was of the generation that grew up on the original trilogy (Hope, Empire, and Return of the Jedi, 1983) will be massively biased before seeing one frame of this movie. Anyone born before or after that certain golden age is probably indifferent to these films, and will rate them strictly according to their merits, or lack of merits, as film.
Falling into the category of Star Wars Generation memeber, I recalibrated my sensors, realigned my set of criteria as for what a good movie should be (in other words, lowered my standards), and with some mental preparation (and/or Jedi Mind Tricks), I was able to place myself in the "Star Wars Mindset" during Revenge of the Sith.
I enjoyed the film "as a Star Wars film", but did (of course) find fault with it as well, even "as a Star Wars film".
So viewed not within the broad spectrum of all of cinema, but strictly within the narrow focus afforded to me as a member of the Star Wars Generation, how was Revenge of the Sith?
Was the acting, writing, and direction, overall, mediocre?
Of course.
Are there unresolved plot threads from the other five Star Wars films that will now never be satisfactorily explained?
Of course.
Are there a few moments that are just miserably bad?
Of course.
Are there a few moments that made the fanboy in me want to cheer?
Of course.
Did Mr. Lucas's unhealthy fascination with gratuitous visual effects get in the way of the story telling?
Of course.
Were some of these visuals astounding and gorgeous?
Of course.
Will the hard core fans adore it?
Of course.
Will the nay-sayers hate it?
Of course.
The opening text crawl informs us that the war between the Galactic Republic and the Separatists - initiated during Attack of the Clones - is nearing resolution. However, the Republic's Supreme Chancellor Palpatine (Ian Mc Diarmid) been kidnapped. Two Jedi Knights fly into the heart of a battle in space, above the galactic capital planet of Corsucant, to rescue the most powerful man in the galaxy.
One common and absolutely legitimate gripe that has become worse and worse with each passing prequel film, is the overabundance of distracting digital effects that do not do anything for the story.
Every single frame of this film has something moving in the background. More often than not, this detail can distract the eye from the main focus of the scene. Serious dramatic scenes, such as those between Padme (Natalie Portman) and Anakin Skywalker / Darth Vader (Hayden Christensen) become less intimate and lose dramatic focus due to a preponderance of background details. Shiny objects to catch the eye.
The worst example of this is the opening battle scene. Although visually stunning, the scene has no tension or dramatic impact whatsoever. As Anakin and Obi Wan Kenobi (Ewan McGregor) pilot their starfighters through an insanely complicated space battle, it is impossible to make sense of any of it, given the sheer density of ships on the screen. It seems that something epic and important is going on... but what?
Compare this to the space battle at the end of A New Hope: there are rarely more than a handful of starships on the screen at any given moment, but this sparsity keeps the viewer's attention focused on the important parts of the combat, and draws the viewer into each individual conflict. Each Rebel X-wing fighter that is lost is noted and mourned, each Imperial TIE fighter defeated is a relief. We follow the battle, we keep score, and we watch as the rebel fighters dwindle in number until there's only one hero left to save the galaxy. Good stuff!
Revenge of the Sith's space battle is just a mess, taking all of the worst elements from Phantom Menace's also-botched interstellar melee and magnifying them.
Additionally, the original trilogy used more or less the same ship designs throughout the trilogy, adding a few new ones at the end of Jedi. The viewer always knew who the good guys were.
In Sith (as well as during the battle at the end of Clones), there are so many new ship, tank, gun, droid, and trooper designs, all competing in the chaos on screen, that the viewer can't even tell who the good guys are most of the time. And frankly, who cares? There's no tension in these clone wars. It is clones versus droids most of the time, and no 'real' thinking sentient beings are directly at risk. The citizens of the galaxy can sit back and relax as some droid or clone fights their star wars for them.
After the space battle, we come to another extended action sequence, involving a rescue, just like in the third film of the original trilogy. In Return of the Jedi, it was Han Solo who needed help. This time, Anakin and Obi Wan infiltrate the Separatist flagship to rescue Palpatine. There is a lot of slapstick comedy thrown in to this sequence (perhaps to balance the deadly serious nature of the latter parts of the film), most of it involving the droid R2-D2 and some Separatist battle droids.
R2-D2 seems to have quite a bit more dexterity in his grasping appendages than ever before, going so far as to catch a comlink tossed to him. Compare this to how stiff his appendages are in the earlier films; his arms seem to be made of rubber now! Still, it is always fun to see the droid's latest gadgets in each film. From the first time one of the little doors on his torso opened up to reveal some sort of tool (in A New Hope), we have wondered what sort of gadgets were in the numerous other compartments. Six films later, we've seen just about all of them! This time he reveals the ability to eject an oil slick. Has R2-D2 become the Star Wars equivalent of James Bond's Aston Martin in Goldfinger(1963)?
A mini controversy has sprung up regarding R2-D2's newfound ability to spring from the droid socket of Anakin's starfighter. I got the impression that it was the ship that ejected the droid, rather than the droid springing from the ship under it's own power. The reason we never see this happen in any of the other films is because we never see that particular model of space ship in any other film.
Yes, that was me justifying an inconsistency.
Call me a Lucas apologist if you want to.
You won't for long...
Some business in an elevator shaft goes on a bit too long, and to little dramatic effect, although it is amusing how Anakin and Obi Wan avoid a cadre of destroyer droids by simply closing the (heavily armored, apparently) door to the elevator they are standing in. The brief look that passes between them as they find out that the elevator is full of more droids is priceless. These battle droids are also quite silly, with many dopey lines of dialogue. It is quite hard to view them as a threat to our heroes. Even their movement and body language is different from their behavior in the past two films, and they come off as more whimsical than menacing. Not good.
Anakin and Obi Wan then confront Count Dooku / Darth Tyrannus (Christopher Lee), the pretend-kidnapper of Palpatine. Little do Anakin and Obi Wan know that Palpatine and Dooku are actually in cahoots, the kidnapping a ruse. This is the first of many scenes in the film where McDiarmid shines as Palpatine / Darth Sidious. Virtually every line he delivers in Sith is a tour de force. If there was ever a performance in a Star Wars film worthy of an Oscar, McDiarmid's Sith performance is a shoo-in for a best supporting actor nod.
Dooku is dispatched far too quickly, and is replaced by a new villain, General Grievous. There is no clear reason why Dooku couldn't have lived longer and performed all of Grievous's plot functions in the film... except for perhaps the fact that Grievous will make a far more exciting toy, even if this digitally generated character is only a fraction as interesting to watch as the charismatic Christopher Lee's gentlemanly Count Dooku. I supose that Anakin needed to do something questionable or 'dark' at this point in the film, but having him slaughter this particular villain - whom we've just begun to get a taste for - perhaps wasn't the best story choice for Lucas to have made.
Listen for the famous "Wilhelm" scream during a combat scene on Grievous's ship, just after Dooku is killed. This is a sound effect that pops up in almost every Lucas or Steven Spielberg production, almost akin to Hitchcock's traditional cameo. Also listen for the voice of the Neimoidian pilot on Grievous's ship: this may be the worst voice acting in the entire saga.
Anakin and Obi Wan, now with the 'helpless' Palpatine in tow, go through more nonsense with elevator shafts. With the running time of the last Star Wars movie running down like the sand in an hourglass, rushing headlong towards a moment when all the Star Wars we will ever see on the big screen has been seen, the best thing George Lucas can think of as an action scene is Obi Wan yelling at R2-D2 via comlink to activate an elevator. The heroes are then captured by Grievous (the 'ray shields' that capture them are a super-subtle nod to A New Hope), scare off Grievous, crash land the ship they are on, and return the galactic leader to safety.
After the comedy and intensity of this extended rescue / battle scene, the film now takes a turn to the dark. There is little humor in the rest of the movie, and it seems clear that the overabundance of R2-D2 hijinx and battle droid silliness in the rescue scenes are there to try to lighten the mood of the first part of what will become a very heavy film. Heavy for Star Wars, that is.
For all of the flak that Christensen and Natalie Portman get about the chemistry (or lack thereof) in their scenes together, their encounters are much better in Sith than they were in Clones. But that isn't saying much. If the dialogue is a little cheesy and lacks the snap and crackle of the banter between Han Solo (Harrison Ford) and Princess Leia (Carrie Fisher) in Empire, it can at least be said that there's nothing that will truly make a viewer want to cringe, this time. Well, not too much.
Well, you know: it's Star Wars. Or so say the sycophants.
There are a few nice acting moments, such as when the cocky and battle-weary mega-warrior Anakin is reduced back to the level of an insecure teenager for a moment after Padme asks him "So love has blinded you?". Then they banter for a bit. After multiple viewings, what they say still makes no sense at all.
Padme and Anakin have half a dozen scenes together, almost all of which take place in her apartment. Granted, she is pregnant, but until the very end of the film, she doesn't do a single thing but sit around at home and wait for Anakin to come along to have discussions with her. After her great take-charge and kick-ass persona both in the Senate and on the battlefield in Episode II - remember her hauling ass off of Tatooine to go rescue Obi Wan, and "aggressive negotiations"? - it is a shame to see her doing absolutely nothing in this film.
Yeah, OK, she's preggers. Got it.
There's a moment of coolness when we see Anakin's bionic arm as he gets out of Padme's bed after a nightmare. This nightmare is a premonition that begins Anakin's obsession with the knowledge that his wife is doomed. This plot point ends up turning onto an Othello-like Moebius loop of a story, in which Anakin's prophecy is self fulfilled. His single minded devotion to saving his wife from a fate she has not yet suffered is what ends up turning him into the instrument of her death. Herein lies the core tragedy of this film, and of the Star Wars saga as a whole.
After another geek moment, in which Master Vos - a background character played by an anonymous extra in the Phantom Menace, and who was later turned into a major character in the Star Wars comic books - is mentioned, Obi Wan tells Anakin of Palpatine's bid for further executive powers. This character's rise to power in Menace and Clones, and the freedoms and liberties he stomps on during his ascension, have eerie echoes of some of the more unsavory acts that the current government of the United States has been perpetrating.
There are certainly people out there who feel that the Bush administration has used the terrorist attacks in Washington and New York in 2001 as an excuse to trample on a lot of the freedoms that Americans hold dear, and to launch a bogus war against Iraq. There are people who believe that the Bush administration is among the most corrupt and self serving in history. There are people who believe that the Bush administration has seized far too much power and that their actions mirror the actions of well-known Fascists. Palpatine's actions in Attack of the Clones hint at this behavior strongly, and his actions - and later Darth Vader's - in Revenge of the Sith resonate even more blatantly given the current state of politics in this country.
At this point in the story, Yoda needs to be off of Coursucant, so as not to be around during a later attack (and to therefore survive it). Why not send him somewhere that fans have been salivating for? Yoda gets a ticket to Kashyyyk, planet of the Wookiees. Like the elevator scenes, the Kashyyyk scenes are gratuitous and not essential to the story, but unlike the dreaded elevator of doom, the Wookiee bits are among the more visially spectacular and fun moments in the film. The design of the planet, which has been glimpsed in spin off products such as art books, comics, and television, is now fully realized. Placing the arboreal Wookiee city on the shore of a lake and staging a battle there is amazing and all too short. Why not have made this battle longer, and cut the elevator action altogether?
There is a nice moment during the battle where Yoda calmly dodges a laserbolt, and another scene in the screenplay - cut from the film - where Chewbacca and his boss Tarful play dead as Yoda does the 'insane little gnome' routine that he perpetrates upon Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) in Empire. This added scene might have been fun to see, but as we'll discover there were even more substantial scenes cut from the film. The scenes are all brief, but as they don't actually move the already dense story along at all, we will have to be happy with what amounts to an extended cameo by Chewbacca and his people.
Anakin, meanwhile, arrives at a surreal "space opera" (get it?) to meet with Palpatine in his private box. McDiarmid is riveting in these scenes as he continues his seduction of Anakin, a manipulation planned to the letter. As he relates the Sith legend of Darth Plagueis, we can see the wheels turning in Anakin's mind, and we are right there with him as he is seduced. There is also a bomb dropped here, that echoes legendary Star Wars moments such as "Luke, I am your father", but it is layered in so subtly that many may not grasp it's implications. Geeks will argue over it for decades to come. This moment is, of course, the implication that either Darth Plagueis or Palpatine/Sidious is directly responsible for Anakin's birth. I propsed this idea way back in 1999, in an article for Blue Harvest magazine, and everyone said I was crazy. The exact mechanics of what is implied in the film are a bit different from what I speculated, but the end result is the same: someone got to Shmi Skywalker (Anakin's mom) and did something sinister.
Anakin and Obi Wan are given new missions, and as they part, there is a wonderful moment when Anakin and Obi Wan see each other for the last time as friends and brothers. Anakin actually apologizes to Obi Wan for his arrogance, and as they leave each other, there is a nice moment of genuine warmth between them.
Obi Wan ends up on another spectacularly imagined planet, Utapau, where he rides a cool lizard and defeats Grievous. His throwaway line after Grievous's demise is the best laugh in the film and is another slight nod to A New Hope. Obi Wan's lizard mount has a howl that I would pick as my favorite sound in the film; a scene showing where Obi Wan acquires his reptilian mount was cut.
After Anakin learns that his mentor Palpatine is the evil Sith Lord, and Jedi Master Mace Windu (Samuel L. Jackson) flies off to confront Palpatine, there is an interlude that is unlike anything else in the series, and it works quite well. We see Anakin in the Jedi council chambers, contemplating the revelation that his mentor is the enemy, but also his needing that mentor/villain's aid to teach him the skills he needs to save Padme.
Meanwhile, Padme is in her apartment, as usual, staring out the window, contemplating Anakin, their child(ren), and their uncertain future. Over creepy atmospheric music, and with no sound effects or dialogue, Anakin sits in the Jedi Temple, staring at Padme's apartment building across the Coruscant cityscape, as Padme stares at the Jedi Temple from her balcony. Anakin sheds a tear as he decides his destiny and flies off to save the enemy from the allies.
Palpatine comes out of the Sith closet to reveal himself to the Jedi as Darth Sidious, and instantly slays three powerful Jedi masters. Frankly, these three Jedi go down way too easily; two of them barely defend themselves. Certainly there are already copious amounts of fight scenes in this movie, and shoehorning even more fighting into the plot is asking for a lot. But I would have liked to have seen just a few seconds of footage that would illustrate that, even against a Sith Lord, the Jedi who attain the rank of Master aren't complete hacks.
In one of the best scenes in the entire Star Wars saga, Sidious slays Mace Windu, and Anakin is given the Sith name of Darth Vader. As Vader enters the Jedi temple to kill everyone he finds there, Sidious commands his clone army to activate Order 66 - apparently a command imbedded into the genetically loyal clone army requiring them to kill Jedi. They do so instantly, and without hesitation or mercy.
The Jedi purge is something fans have waited a lifetime to see on screen, and the sequence is handled just as we always imagined it: a montage of scenes each taking place on a different planet, each showing the betrayal and murder of a Jedi. Unfortunately it all feels a bit rushed. In just over two minutes of screen time, most of the major Jedi masters and knights are eliminated. Only Ki Adi Mundi gets to put up a fight, the rest are just shot in the back without a moment to react. Just a few beats, a few acting moments, just a few seconds to allow each Jedi to react and see his or her fate coming would have made this sequence infinitely more effective.
The clone troopers who carry out this action do so unhesitatingly, as if they are not the least bit surprised or caught off guard by the order to slay their Generals. As if they had been prepared for it all along. Waiting for it. They too could have benefited from the editors adding just a few frames here and there to give the clones a beat or two for the order to sink in before they executed it.
Yoda has a great acting moment (for a computer program, that is!) when he senses the death of his comrades. He is then, of course, aided by the Wookiees after defeating some clone troopers attempting to execute Order 66. By aiding Yoda and turning against both droid and clone, the Wookiees are officially the first species to rebel against the Empire.
Anakin - now officially named Darth Vader - goes to the Jedi temple, slays a bunch of trusting little children with Dickensonian accents, and then does what any other child murderer would do: he goes to see his pregnant wife to tell her that everything will be all right. He then goes to the world of Mustafar to eliminate the remaining Separatist leaders. As he does the dirty work, we actually feel sorry for perpetual sorta-bad guy Nute Gunray as he pleads pitifully for his life. Anakin cries with rage - or is it with pain - as he slays his unarmed opponents. He knows he is becoming evil, he knows that what he is doing isn't right, but he is in too deep. When we see him shed another tear, it is his final moment of humanity.
Bail Organa helps Yoda and Obi Wan sneak into the now-deserted Jedi temple to get some answers and set up a warning signal for other Jedi to stay away. The brief moments of Yoda fighting outside the temple are among the best shots of Yoda fighting in Clones or Sith - they're the only ones where he's not flipping through the air and spinning around like a dervish.
Obi Wan learns of Anakin's defection by (essentially) watching television, and is then sent by Yoda to confront him. Having no idea where Anakin is, Obi Wan fills Padme in on current events, and then stows away on her ship when she finally leaves her living room in order to go to Anakin. Portman squeezes in a subtle character moment just after she lands on Mustafar. She stops to consider the future, gazing out her cockpit window, and then runs (very unpregnantly) down the ship's gangway ramp.
The confrontation between Anakin and Padme is an amazing scene. Yes, the delivery can be a little stiff at times, especially compared to the terrific performance that McGregor turns in just a few moments later when Obi Wan emerges from hiding to deal with Anakin. But this doesn't matter. If we judged Star Wars movies by the acting, they'd all be stinkers. This is part of the slack that we must always give these films.
One of the best moments in the entire film, one which will come as a pleasant and mind-bending surprise is when Anakin attempts to have Padme join his dark path, suggesting to her that they overthrow the Emperor together and rule the galaxy. His words are close to being a verbatim premonition of what he will say to his son Luke, twenty-three years later (that is, in Star Wars galaxy-time... it was twenty-five years earlier on Earth when we first heard him speak this plea) on Cloud City. This terrific insight gives us a better peek into Vader's twisted mind than anything we have seen before or since. This man is so blinded by greed, jealousy, and a need to make the galaxy an decent place - by his standards, that is - that he thinks offering his wife (and later his son) an opportunity to rule the galaxy is what they want from him. What they both really want is for him to simply give up the hatred and the darkness and show them some love. The power that he has has amassed for one reason only - to help his family - is the thing that has driven them away frm him, and eventually destroyed them all.
Power corrupts, indeed.
But poor Anakin just doesn't get it.
So Obi Wan has to kick his ass.
Like the slaughter of the Jedi, the battle on the lava planet has been a part of Star Wars lore since day one, and now we finally get to see it.
George Lucas likes to intercut the battle scenes at the end of many of the Star Wars flilms, jumping back and forth between several climactic confrontations. For the most part it works in the other films, but during the clash on Mustafar, the cuts away (to a pointless battle between Palpatine and Yoda) are distracting and break the tension, and ruin the flow of the battle. Overall the fight is a disappointment. There isn't a lot of tension, and the sword play falls far short of what we saw in, say The Phantom Menace. Perhaps the best moment in the battle is when Anakin and Obi wan force-push each other. We see that their power is equally matched as their battle is deadlocked for a moment. Although the characters never really integrate with the digital sets (it always looks like a rear-screen projection from a 1940s flick), the epic battle does finally with an intense and satisfying conclusion: Obi Wan has Anakin on the ropes, and Anakin chooses to attack anyway. It is his undoing. The scene is tense enough, and gruesome enough, that watching Anakin writhe about on the ground missing both of his legs and arms, the urge to yell out a Pythonesque "it's but a flesh wound" is easily squelched. Or not.
<funny Brit accent>
Vader: 'Tis but a scratch.
Obi Wan: A scratch?! Your arm's off!
Vader: No it isn't.
Obi Wan: (pointing to the severed arm on the ground) What's that then?
Vader: I've had worse.
Obi Wan: You liar!
Vader: C'mon, you pansy.
Obi Wan: Look you stupid bastard, you've got no arms left!
Vader: Yes I have.
Obi Wan: Look!!
Vader: Just a flesh wound.
</funny Brit accent>
...no, no, no, forget all of that, this is serious.
McGregor shines again as Obi Wan. Horrified by what he has had to do to his friend, apprentice, and brother, he screams at the unresponsive quad-amputee Anakin, who's clothes catch on fire and who is then consumed by flames. Obi Wan's complete misery at everything that has happened - Palpatine's betrayal, the slaughter of the Jedi, the turning of Anakin - gushes out of him in the most intense emotional outburst we see by any character in any of the films. The perpetually calm Obi Wan losing his cool and freaking out is a first-class acting moment froim McGregor, and as epic an event as anything else in any of the films.
Anakin's simple reply: "I hate you" is vile and creepy as hell.
During the Yoda/Palpatine duel, there's another great geek moment when Yoda effortlessly takes out two of Palpatine's guards, and I also noticed that Yoda points his lightsaber directly at the camera at one stage in the fight, and holds it there for a bit. Anakin and Mace do the same thing at other points in the film - this never happens in any of the other Star Wars films. Given George Lucas's recent announcement that he will utilize a new 3-D technology to release all of the Star Wars films in 3-D, I can't help but wonder if all of this lightsaber-in-your-face business is in anticipation of SW3D.
Just as Lucas cut back and forth between Anakin and Padme during their tortured reflections earlier in the film, he does so again - to signifigantly greater effect - during what may be considered the beginning of the film's epilogue. As Padme gives birth to Luke and Leia, surgeon droids construct Darth Vader. Padme and Anakin are both near death, both in pain, both afraid, both in the hospital. Although given the name Darth Vader earlier in the film, Vader is truly born here, at the same moment as his children. Anakin Skywalker and Padme also essentially die at the same moment.
Vader's moment of fear, and then resignation, as he watches his helmet being lowered towards his face is terrific, and the point-of-view shot that follows gives the audience its first and only look inside the helmet. A profile shot of the mask's three components being sealed into place is visually stunning, and a few understated but crucial sound effects give gravity to this epic moment. Vader's first breath follows just as Padme takes her last.
Vader's first steps are awkward as he gets used to his bionic legs, and are reminiscent of Frankenstiens's monster - which, from a certain point of view, Vader strongly resembles. Both are essentially dead guys reanimated and rebuilt out of spare parts. Hearing his familiar voice (James Earl Jones) for the first time, asking about Padme's fate is oddly touching. It is, perhaps, the last moment of compassion he will exhibit until his decision 24 years later, to kill his new mentor and save his son.
Of course, upon learning of Padme's death, the only truly, really, embarrassingly bad moment of the film takes place: his scream of "Nooooo!" is awe-inspiring in it's awfulness.
Six years ago, I was arrogant enough, while reviewing The Phantom Menace, to suggest ways to 'fix' the film. I won't make that mistake again, but I think that the visual on screen during Vader's miserable howl would work just fine, and perhaps be even more effective, with the sound turned off for a moment.
The series of codas that follow are short and to the point (unlike, for example, the fifteen endings on Peter Jackson's amazing Return of the King).
So much Star Wars legend is crammed into the last five minutes of the movie that it almost feels like the trailer for a fourth prequel film. We learn why, in later episodes, C -3PO doesn't remember anything about the galactic history he has witnessed in the early episodes. We observe Yoda, Obi Wan, and Bail Organa deciding the fate of Luke and Leia, and we see them delivered safely to Tatooine and Alderaan, respectively. We see Yoda and Obi Wan talking about Qui Gon (who died in Menace) and discussing how to turn into ghosts when they die. Grand Moff Tarkin makes a cameo as he observes the first stage of construction on the Death Star with Palpatine and Darth Vader (twenty-three years to build the first one, four years to build - most of - the second one...). And we see Padme's funeral. Disguised so as to look as though her babies died with her, she clutches the pendant that Anakin carved for her in The Phantom Menace. Her parents - characters cut from Attack of the Clones - attend the funeral procession, as do supporting characters from previous episodes such a Boss Nass, Sio Bibble, and Jar Jar Binks.
And so ends the Star Wars saga.
So, a few other points.
There are two short scenes that were cut out that are very interesting in that they show Palpatine implying to Anakin - or leading Anakin to draw his own conclusions - that Obi Wan and Padme are having an affair.
This is good stuff, and echoes of the plot line are still observed in the finished film: in one scene, Anakin is angry when he senses that Obi Wan has been in Padme's apartment. Later, when Obi Wan emerges from Padme's ship on Mustafar, Anakin really gets pissed off. As originally scripted, this proves to him that Obi Wan and Padme weren't behaving themselves. As shot and edited, Obi Wan's appearance loses a little of the impact it could have had, but Anakin has several other reasons to feel betrayed by Obi Wan, and the loss of the affair subplot doesn't make him any less pissed off at Obi Wan's arrival.
Another series of deleted scenes has Padme doing something really great, which is leaving her apartment and plotting with Bail Organa and Mon Mothma to establish an organization that we will know of in later episodes as the Rebel Alliance. Lucas stated in an interview that these scenes were cut to focus the story on Anakin, but I can tell you, a little less of the lame Grievous, a little less tomfoolery in the elevator shafts, a few less shots of starships taking off and landing (go ahead, count them), and a little more Rebel Alliance stuff would have gone a long way in my book to make this movie kick a little more ass than it does.
Mon Mothma's character was completely cut from the film, and that's really disappointing.
Finally, a few plot holes that I just can't give slack to...
I was really annoyed that the whole Sifo-Dyas plot thread that was begun in Attack of the Clones was not resolved. There is a bunch of sloppy, confusing dialogue in Clones about some Jedi we've never seen or heard of before, who apparently, without the knowledge of the other Jedi, placed an order for a clone army, and was then killed. How was an army of a million troops paid for on a Jedi's salary, why would a Jedi place an order for an army in the first place (especially without telling his bosses), and why did Dooku - estranged from the Jedi, and therefore not the first person Sifo-Dyas would go to - end up providing Jango Fett, the template for the clones? Was Sifo-Dyas in cahoots with Dooku and Sidious? And didn't the Kaminoans ever contact the Jedi to give them status reports on their army? Obi Wan finds the Kaminoans through detective work mere days(?) before the army is ready for delivery - an army that none of the other Jedi know anything about. What would have happened if he'd not found them? Would the Kaminoans have finally contacted the Jedi with a "hey - it's been a decade since we heard from you, but your army is ready, come and get 'em"?
None of this stuff is answered.
Sifo-Dyas is never even mentioned in Sith.
I suppose the implication here is that ol' George thought he made all of the necessary plot points clear in Clones, but guess what George: most of the population thought that the Sifo-Dyas stuff was a cliffhanger that would be resolved in the next film. It is absolutely not clear what the hell this is all about.
It turns out that all of this is explained in a spin-off novel, Labyrinth of Evil, but it is frankly not acceptable to open up a new plot thread in the second-last installment of a six-picture saga, and then choose not to resolve it on screen. Very annoying.
And the other big plot hole is the whole "why do some Jedi become ghosts but most of them just die" thing.
Well, another cut scene tells us that Yoda has been hearing the voice of Qui Gon Jinn (as played by Liam Neeson in The Phantom Menace), speaking from beyond the grave. Qui Gon is going to teach Yoda and the other Jedi how to do something he didn't quite master himself - how to become a ghost and live forever. He nailed the living forever part, but not the appearing as a ghost part, apparently. He's just a disembodied voice (heard very briefly and subtly, in fact, in Attack of the Clones). Unfortunately, all of the other Jedi die before word gets out. So in one scene that we do get to see, Yoda tells Obi Wan that he has heard from Qui Gon, and that while the two surviving Jedi are in exile, they will meditate and learn this skill.
It's too bad that we didn't get to hear Liam Neeson's voice and find out a little bit more about this stuff, but the really nagging question here is this: how the hell did Anakin learn to do this? I can accept that he appears a ghost in Jedi as his young self because that is the age he was last a "good guy", but how the hell did he learn the ghost skills in the first place?
grrr....
This is going to keep me up nights until a spin-off novel explains it.
All in all, Revenge of the Sith is the best of the prequel trilogy. There are a bunch of really great moments, fabulous performances from McGregor and McDiarmid, and some spectacular eye candy. There are also a few really bad moments, some annoying plot holes, rushed moments that should have been longer, some long scenes that could have been cut, some cut scenes that should have been included, and too many gratuitous effects that distract from the story, rather than enhancing it.
Overall, the thing that keeps Sith - and the other two prequels - from being truly as great as A New Hope or The Empire Strikes Back, is heart. These prequels all feel very much like the digital creations that they are. The prequels are essentailly cartoons with a few live actors dropped into them. Generated by computers, and containing all the soul of the microprocessors that spawned them, these animations seem to be excersizes in stretching the technology that made them, more than satisfying dramas.
In A New Hope, Darth Vader says (to governor Tarkin, regarding the Death Star), "don't be so proud of this technological terror you've constructed. The ability to destroy a planet is insignifigant next to the power of the Force".
This statement can be taken as a comment on the films themselves; if the prequels are a technological terror, all artificial, cold, unemotional, and digital, then the original trilogy is the Force: full of life and spirit, visceral and energetic.
Ultimately this difference is what makes the original trilogy - complete with plot holes and bad dialogue - a classic film series, and the prequel trilogy little more than a curiosity.
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