Not nearly as good as we hoped

Rating: 2/10 (28 May 2005)

I feel that the critic's reviews of this movie are in error. Let's face it; this is not a good movie. As much as people want to believe it's good it still falters when it comes to the core criteria of what makes an engaging film. Revenge of the Sith suffers from bad lines of dialog, un-suspenseful action, poorly directed actors, bad sense of timing, and horrible story boarding.
I'll go down the list I created. There are some awful lines in this movie. In screen writing classes, we are told not to have our character's spell out their their emotions in dialog and have them 'show' their emotions through actions and expressions. This movie is speckled with such poor dialog and in a very cliché manner.
The events in this movie are truly un-suspenseful. There are a couple of scenes where I was questioning if a character was going to die or go through some great change; but these were few and far between. To create drama, you must make the audience question whether a character will survive a certain conflict or event or undergo a severely damaging change. (We know that certain key characters will survive this film because of the sequels but having the audience question how they will overcome such severe emotional stress will still create drama).
The actors in this Revenge of the Sith are very good; I've seen them in other films, but they were given such bad lines to read that they seem to stumble over them. And their poor delivery of dialog shows bad direction on Lucas' part. Also, there is a lack of emotion in these characters in a film where a lot of intense events occur; lots of betrayal and inner conflict are in this movie, but there are very little emotional reactions to them. Isn't a film supposed to be about drama? There is only one scene in this movie where true drama existed, and it was in the only sequence with no dialog at all.
The timing in this movie is a bit of a mystery. After seeing the film all the way through, I realized that it takes place over several months. This you can tell with Padme's pregnancy. However, the characters in their actions and dialog don't portray this passing of time and neither does the script itself. The audience is carried from one scene to the next seemingly as if there is no great leaps and bounds in time (but there are). All serious filmmakers know that jumping through time in a narrative means dips to black or some other form of showing time pass. This did not occur.
The shot composition in this movie is really bad. I'm not asking for hugely creative shots, but there are far too many standard setups in this movie. Every scene consists of the standard two-shot (as if in a play) with very little coverage. There are hardly any close-ups to show emotional reactions in the characters.
General synopsis of the movie; it had so much potential to be a wonderful film. There are some very intense occurrences in Revenge of the Sith. Unfortunately, Lucas failed to create an emotional connection with these characters and how they deal with their conflict. And it's sad that it had to come to this. The Star Wars saga is so huge and such a big part of so many people's lives. But it has been marred by the poor legacy of the recent trilogy that has forgotten the key elements of what makes a good story which ultimately makes a good film.