Confirmed! Directed by Committee!

Rating: 6/10 (6 November 2005)

Back in June, just after this film was released, I went to see it once in the theatres. Just for that "wide screen" effect. The action was good, but not great. The effects were fantastic, as one would expect from ILM. The characters and plot, though, as continued from the previous two films, were just as wooden and disappointing. I knew that only with the DVD release would I have a chance to understand just how George Lucas does what he does (or doesn't). The DVD does not disappoint in this regard.
In my analysis, I was helped by a Canadian-broadcast documentary on the making of the original "Star Wars" in 1976. Apparently, this film experience was such a trauma for the young Mr. Lucas that he swore to obtain full creative control over subsequent films. Directing was such a chore that he delegated it out to others for "Empire" and "Return".
Ironically, even though Lucas is the nominal director for the prequel trilogy, nearly every aspect of the creative process is delegated to others. "Lucasfilm" has a previsulaization department that goes way beyond storyboarding scenes for George. The department, in fact, scripts out every movement and camera decision before the titular director hits the set. George, of course, preapproves these decisions, evaluating them as they fit into his script, but that is it. On set, George's role is little more than calling "action" and "cut", and using the HD technology to determine which shot will make it into the final cut.
The "extras" in the DVD have the talking heads all waxing sycophantically concerning "what George wants" or articulating and visualizing "George's vision". Given the degree to which this film is designed by committee, it is the committee's vision that is really being articulated on film.
What is on film is a series of over-production-designed action pieces held together by a plot that has been clearly established over the past 30 years (except for the fact that in Lucas' original 1976 novelization of his own screenplay, Darth Vader actually did kill Anakin Skywalker). Lucas establishes such suffocating control over the creative process that no scene has any life of its own.
George himself refers to the films as "essentially it is a silent movie". That statement says volumes of the roles of the live-action actors. Acting almost entirely in front of blue or green screens, the actors are reduced to little more than computer fodder for post production. Andy Sirkis in LOTR put in a more inspired performance in a similar situation because Peter Jackson actually cared about the humanity at the core of the film rather than primarily the visual effect. In "Sith" the characters are there solely to move the action, and set up the transformation of Anakin into Darth Vader. And it doesn't work.
It doesn't work because the audience never believed or invested in emotionally the incredibly wooden relationship between Padme and Anakin. This is revealed as the primary wedge that Palpatine uses to "turn (Anakin) to the Dark Side". Whether one believes this transformation is dependent on whether one accepts that someone like Anakin is as weak-willed as we are presented. To be that weak-willed, Anakin would have to loose all charm. Does he have any? That depends on the audience member. A competent director of actors would have been able to paint this internal conflict a lot more realistically.
Or, let me put it another way: contrast the character arc of Anakin with that of Sharon Valeri on "Battlestar Galactica" in Season One. Sympathetic, a Cylon pawn, and a deadly danger to humanity, "Boomer" is accomplished precisely because she is portrayed by a talented actress and is written by Ron Moore, a man who cares as much for the characters as how they service the plot. Valeri's attempted assassination of Adama leaves the audience pitying the tragedy of Valeri, someone the audience has come to truly care for. Pity that Vader could not be pulled off as such a tragic figure.
AS with the previous two films, it works best as a spectacle. George is probably right: see it as a silent movie. Ignore the dialogue, characterization, and even the story. Appreciate it for what it is: a triumph for ILM and the production designers (not to mention all the product tie-ins that have been sold). It ain't Shakespeare.
BSG cost how much? ROTS cost how much?