George Lucas does not know how to make movies anymore. perhaps he should buy a pig farm...

Rating: Null/10 (28 November 2005)

Revenge of the Sith should have been The Godfather of the science fiction genre, a powerful human tragedy about a good man corrupted by evil. However, because of George Lucas' inability to tell a compelling story about people, Anakin Skywalker will never be the powerful tragic figure Michael Corleone still is today. It's a shame George Lucas told the stories of the prequel trilogies from a technical/historical perspective and not a human one. What made the Original Star Wars Trilogy so great was the focus on the lives of ordinary people brought together by this intergalactic war. What makes the "Prequel" trilogy so horrible is the focus on major historical events of the war and not the people who defined them. Throughout Sith Lucas sees the intergalactic war of the Trade Federation and the Galactic Republic as something that happened in the past and treats Anakin's story as just one of the events in history. Due to this past viewpoint and historical perspective of the story, Lucas fails to develop Anakin into a three-dimensional character I could relate to. Because the story and the characters are so one dimensional, I have no reason to care about Anakin's story or his relationships with the other characters like Papaltine, Padame, The Jedi Council or Obi Wan. When Anakin turns to the Dark Side it has no impact on me. It's just another insignificant event in the larger history of the Star Wars universe. This type of indifferent perspective is good for a history book, bad for a movie where we need to care about the characters in order to be involved with the story. There are all these great tragic stories about people affected by this intergalactic war in Sith. However, without the three-dimensional human characters to give them depth and dimension, they have no heart and no soul. Sith quickly deteriorates from a tragic movie into a poorly made series of intergalactic history channel documentary reenactments with the artificial feel of a LucasArts PC game. In just two and a half hours, the Galactic Republic falls, most of the Jedis are all killed, Anakin becomes Darth Vader, the twins are born, Padame dies of a broken heart (ridiculous) and Obi-wan and Yoda go into seclusion. Because of Lucas' obsession with only technical aspects of the film, the acting from the humans is horrible in this movie. I won't be too hard on the actors; they aren't the reason Revenge of the Sith is a disaster. That blame falls squarely on George Lucas' shoulders. He micromanaged the actors so much that they couldn't perform well. He nitpicked the way every line was said, they way every facial expression was made; the way every lightsaber stroke was slashed. Having been micromanaged myself in jobs, I can tell you no employee performs well in this type of environment. Someone needs to tell Mr. Lucas that movie projects are a collaborative effort and you have to trust your actors' ability to perform if you want them to act naturally. Due to the micromanaging, Hayden Christensen is wretched in the role of Anakin Skywalker. He says his no lines with any emotion, he has no chemistry with Ian McDarmind Ewan McGregor or Natalie Portman. His "expressions" of anger are sadly a laugh riot. Natalie Portman is just a nightmare as Padame Amidala. She says her lines as if she were reading them off the page. Samuel L. Jackson gives his second worst performance in a movie (see The Man for the first) as Mace Windu. He looks so stressed out in some scenes it's just troubling. Ian McDarmind hams it up as Papaltine taking the character way over the top. Ewan McGregor tries to add dimension to Obi-Wan Kenobi, but the script he's given is too puerile to work with. Jimmy Smits is the only actor to perform well in this movie. In his limited time on screen, he gives Senator Bail Organa the dimension needed to make me care about him. With the exception of Smits, everyone should just take this trilogy off the resume on the back of their headshots. It's just not their best work. Perhaps the greatest tragedy of these three disastrous prequel films is what transpired behind the camera over the past sixteen years. In his isolation, George Lucas, a once hardworking good man has become so corrupted by wealth, greed, and power (The Dark Side of Hollywood) that he no longer understands what human elements make a movie great. ROTS and the entire prequel trilogy will sadly go down in history as just another by-product of today's corrupted movie-making craft that thinks fake looking computer generated special effects are superior to compelling human storytelling and character development. Hollywood filmmakers like Lucas have become so obsessed with what computers can do that the art of movies is losing its humanity. And without a human touch, fantasy movies like ROTS just aren't realistic enough to be compelling to the audience. Some advice to the former gurus of the Science Fiction and fantasy genre such as George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, The Wachowski Brothers, and the people at Paramount who let the Star Trek collapse into a black hole: Science Fiction and fantasy are stories about PEOPLE. The primary focus of the story is the human characters relate to each other and how they live life in these strange and exotic worlds. The main point is to make a commentary our modern society and the culture of today. All those aliens on the screen and those high tech widgets are secondary to the stories about the relationships of the characters.
Play a Jedi Mind trick on yourself. Episodes I, II and III do not exist. Episodes IV, V, and VI are the only parts of the true Star Wars saga.