So near...and yet so far

Rating: 5/10 (8 June 2005)

A dangerous amount of ink has been spilled over Lucas' final installment in the great space-opera saga, and across the world bashers have argued fan-boys in a universal struggle that fittingly mirrors the galactic struggle of the jedi and sith. But for all this, ROTS remains a quite average film, failing to capture the magic of '77 but wandering slowly in the right direction. By all accounts, the dialogue and acting is very sub-par. Anakin and Padme's supposedly passionate exchanges provide more mirth than many of this year's top comedies, with chestnuts like Padme's fevered exclamation "Hold me like you did by the lake at naboo!" The poor acting that has plagued the prequels is again on show, with Christensen doing little more than looking melancholy and yellow-eyed (He's got a scar on his cheek and he's wearing black! You don't reckon he's turning to the dark-side?!) Even supposedly talented actors like Mcgregor, Portman and Sammy LJ come across as bland. As in TPM and AOTC, the cast treat Lucas' inane script like Shakespeare, destroying the sense of fun of the originals (this could probably be something to do with the omnipresence of the jedi in the prequels. However cool lightsabers are, it must be hard to write entertaining lines when your main characters are austere warrior-monks) It is indeed a case of "You can write this s*** George, but you can't say it" However, did anyone expect anything different? The film is good in comparison to many of its contemporaries, tripe like Scott's "Kingdom of Heaven", but it cannot live up to the expectations of millions of Star Wars fans whose hopes were realistically destroyed with the first appearance of a certain Gungan exile. Revenge is in my opinion easily the best of the prequels, with old Mr. Plot poking his head back around the door towards the end. But it is bloated with needless CGI, seemingly video-game style sequences (Anakin even tells R2 at one point to shoot a droid in the eye, which all gamers will recognize as a baddie's hidden weakness) While the lightsaber fights are spectacular, they are seemingly two a penny. It seems one cannot drop a fork on Coruscant without the familiar laser-swords being drawn. Revenge of the Sith is, i believe, a symptom of the modern blockbuster disease, upstaging its cast with bangs and shiny things and putting pre-school rubbish in their distinguished mouths. Yet I cannot feel that Lucas must carry the blame for what he has turned his creation into, with the joy, love and danger that went into A New Hope replaced by lots of money and legions of CG artists.