Barely Watchable Final Installment of Star Wars Saga is Still Badly Scripted and Overacted

Rating: 5/10 (5 February 2008)

You could argue that this review is a 2 1/2-times improvement over my rating of "Star Wars: The Phantom Menace". But when you consider that it only makes it to 5, whereas 6 is my bare minimum for real entertainment value, this is still a mediocre film at best, and still a boring overrated unpolished story at worst. The storyline is a little more interesting than the first installment, but again the script needed serious honing and rewriting. Putting on fancy Sci-Fi costumes is not character development, and nor is neat star-ships flying around good storytelling, in my humble opinion. In other words, simply calling it "Star Wars" with affects and costumes is not enough.
The premise of "Sith" is the strongest of the prequels, chronicling the seduction of Anakin Skywalker toward the Dark Side of The Force. This foundation of the story is what shot the rating up from 2 to 5 for this installment, whereas "Phantom Menace" lacked any kind of a coherent storyline. Unfortunately, the events leading to the seduction and the seduction itself still had major problems because of the flatness of the character of Anakin Skywalker. Much of the scenes and script needed much more molding and shaping. The script seemed like a half-shaped glob of clay which hadn't been quite formed into a solid work of art before being taken out into production.
The lines of this movie, like: "Me? A Master? I'm overwhelmed, sir." followed by "...They need you, more than you know." read like a student in a script-writing class that needs to overcome horrible cliché. One school of thought is that cliché lines usually result from under-developed characterization. Never once did I really get a sense of who Anakin Skywalker really is. Is he loyal to the Jedis or have ambivalence toward them? Does he like combat or not? Does he like anchovies on his pizza? These are questions the script-writer never quite answers, which gives us lots and lots of cliché lines.
The acting is just about as mediocre as the script. Everybody plays like they're in "The Days of Our Lives" with galaxies flowing around them just to remind us that this is a Science Fiction/Fantasy movie. The movie overflows with over-the-top script-writing which can only lead to over-the-top acting. What made the original movies, particularly "A New Hope" and "Empire Strikes Back", so flavorful were the characters, particularly that of Han Solo, who was no question the best character played by the best actor of the series (except VI in which Solo lost his edge and became more sentimental, sort of like Prince Charming in space--for God sakes, his name is Han "Solo"!). Instead, little character development was even attempted, maybe because it would interfere with all the neat CGI affects, which were becoming boring and over-bloated.
An interesting assessment made by the phenomenal writer/director Quinten Tarantino is that there are times when it is best to avoid having the characters discuss "the plot". The plot and subplots of Episode III were so over-discussed by the characters, I felt I wasn't really watching a movie anymore, but hearing a discussion of the story by the screenwriters. In Episodes IV and V, the characters never explained too much about the plot to the point that it seemed unnatural. They gave hints through other lines and expressions. When Luke admonishes Han for not going on the mission to destroy the Death Star, hints of the real challenge are alluded to without really giving much detail, which was far more effective in conveying the magnitude of the undertaking. Instead in "Sith", I saw actors reading a script, not characters engaged in a story. A scene should feel like the viewer is eavesdropping on real people, even if the setting is in another galaxy, rather than seeing actors playing roles.
Overall, another disappointment, maybe more so because the story had great potential. Overall, the entire series ended up with only about 2 1/2 good movies out of 6. Not bad, but not quite 50%. And when you consider how nearly flawless Episodes IV and V were, it is such a disenchantment over what it could have been. One starts to appreciate the work of Peter Jackson's "Lord of the Rings" that went 3 for 3, which was largely due to his working and re-working the script for a number of years before shooting. Lucas redeemed himself in the Indiana Jones series with "The Last Crusade". As for "The Revenge of the Sith", the only thing I can say is: Where was Han Solo when you really needed him?