A villain's movie

Rating: 5/10 (27 May 2005)

The Revenge of the Sith is an unusual movie in a way as it's not trying to tell a story about 'what' is happening, but rather 'how' some things everyone knows are going to happen. Let's face it, there's no way anyone is going to see this without having seen at least one Star Wars movie before or has heard of the famous climax of the Empire Strikes Back. So, basically everyone knows how this is going to turn out. Darkly. Bad for the good guys. Especially one key character, that links all six Star Wars movies together. But the fun is seeing 'how' this is going to happen and happily, I'll have to say it's quite convincing. Darkness has always done good for Star Wars. The best one is still Empire, but this is definitely the best of the new trilogy.
For the dark story of a character's turning to evil, you'll need some tragedy, some fear of loss, and of course a manipulative baddie out for his own. Ian McDiarmid is great as Palpatine. He sure knows, how to play out his cards. A lie there, a half-truth there and a bad encouragement there and voilá: He's become the ruler of the galaxy. He's a real mastermind, because he had control over a whole war and its both armies the whole time. The previous prequels didn't take much interest in him or the other villains, which I thought was a bad thing, but now as I see what Palpatine was aiming for I'm really stunned. I might even re-watch Menace and Clones (only seen both once!) to take a closer look at his scheming.
As most people will say, most of the other acting is as wooden and dull as ever. The thing is, that as George Lucas had left the majority of things that were mentioned in the Original Trilogy for this movie, the movie rolls along so quickly, it leaves preciously little time for the characters to chat. And Jar-Jar doesn't have one line in the movie (Phew!)! There are occasional stupid moments, but as this is a Star Wars movie, I'm willing to forgive. I forgave Spider-man 2 also, didn't I? As Return of the Jedi had its Ewoks and Phantom Menace its Gungans, I'll have to say I hated one character obviously created for toy marketing purposes. It's General Grievous, the Jedi-hunting half-alien, half-cyborg with a stupid Caribbean accent (Hello, racism accusations as after Phantom Menace) and a bad cough. This stupid character who resembles a video game boss with his four arms and Transformers-like changing ability. It's the modern day ewoks all over again, but this time Lucas has figured that PlayStation games sell more than plush toys. I was happy to see Grievous get killed. If only they had a similar scene with Jar-Jar... Or the new-model R2, with electric shock-gun, jetpack and ability to speak words like uh-oh. Curious how 3PO is the one with his memory erased, but R2 is the one who forgot how to use his abilities in all the later episodes.
**** Best part: A tie between two McDiarmid's scenes: The Sith legend he tells Anakin (and still he can't figure out, that he's a sith!) and the fight with him and Mace Windu. Bad time for an entrance, boy...