SITH: Spectacular -- But A Legend Betrayed.

Rating: 5/10 (23 May 2005)

SITH: Liked it, disliked it -- and felt that the legend had once again been betrayed, by George Lucas.
Bottom line: While the film is, overall, a visually creative feast and an enjoyable (though overly violent and inconsistent) adventure, what Lucas has put forth in SITH is a sad and cheesy destruction of all that brilliance and freshness and imagination and uplifting sense of hopefulness that the original Star Wars had brought to life.
In SITH, no more is there hope, no more is there mystery, no more is there a sense of justice, no more is there consistency of logic, no more is there believable dialog, and, worst of all -- outside of the weakly conceived plot-line -- no more is there even halfway-acceptable acting (except in the portrayal of Dooku and of Palpatine and at times the characters of Yoda and R2D2).
This film, in my view, was so poorly scripted and directed -- except in its fabulous special effects and in some of the technological marvels shown -- that the actors could have phoned-in their lines. And Hayden Christensen? Verizon should have canceled his phone-service.
This was a spectacular adventure of a film, worth seeing IF you can force yourself to suspend your disbelief, not of the fantastic world that Lucas has created, but disbelief at the atrocious script, loss of compass, glaring waste of plot-lines begun and then quickly wiped out before they could develop, and, topping it off, the utterly terrible acting (minus the exceptions mentioned above).
Worst of the cast was the choice of so-called actor to play the film?s central character of Anakin Skywalker/Darth Vader: Hayden Christensen. His acting was awful.
For example, in one scene between Anakin and Princess Padme, he delivers his (badly written) lines of "tenderness" so amateurishly that many people in the theater broke out laughing. His big acting-moment came later in the film when, having just recently turned to the dark side, he apparently decides that he has to look determined, so, now planning to slaughter millions, he furrows his brow. I think I smell an Oscar!
But to be fair to the cast members, they all had to suffer under an unbearably clumsy script given them by George Lucas.
But wait! Lucas redeems himself early on by having chosen the immensely talented actor Christopher Lee to portray Count Dooku, doesn't he? But no! Within minutes, Lucas has Dooku killed, beheaded. So much for Dooku - and so much for Lee.
The other exceptions: the fascinating portrayal by Ian McDiarmid of the cunning Senator/Emperor Palpatine. Yoda is fairly expressive and intense. And R2D2 also stands out, being true to his original tradition of having real 'spunk'.
But, thrilling as the overall story is, it falls short. With SITH, it seems to me that George Lucas, has lost his way.
In this film, purportedly a tale of good versus evil, and of how good can be transformed into evil, just about everyone - regardless of which side he's on - is hell-bent on killing everyone on the other side, right from the get-go. Light-sabers battles at every turn. Diplomacy? Feh!
And Anakin's twisted solution (suggested to this incredibly gullible whiny kid by Palpatine) to insuring that his wife, the Princess, won?t die in childbirth? Kill the good guys! Oh, and while you're at it, don't forget to kill their children! Gosh, why didn't I think of that?
And does that flimsy rationale, so easily accepted by Anakin -- that the good guys are really bad and the bad guys are really good, so join the bad, er, good guys, and kill everyone else -- work as a legitimate psychological motivation to pull him to the dark side, such that he quickly and unquestioningly becomes willing to slaughter millions, strangle his pregnant wife, and lose track of his own soul? This is the answer that we've waited for years to learn, about what made Vader Vader?
But wait!There is the heart-pounding battle between the evil Emperor Palpatine and Yoda, as Yoda swings from floating platform to floating platform in the huge Senate chamber, as Palpatine, ensconced on a platform high above, hurls deadly energy bolts and chairs - yes, chairs - at Yoda. Oy!
I think back to Alec Guinness as Obi Wan, telling a sentry "You don't need to see his papers; move along", and the sentry telling his colleague "We don't need to see his papers" and then telling Luke "Move along!". Now, that was inventive, fresh, thought-provoking; it built the character, advanced the plot, and was a great movie-moment. What a contrast!
On and incessantly on, this way the tale unwinds, with the single rationale being this: that a good person can be subverted to become evil without his realizing the evil that he has become; that evil can all too easily rise to dominance; and that the forces of good must seek to destroy the evil. Important, messages, but a filmic opportunity completely abused.
The Force is not with this film.
Yet you may enjoy SITH: it is nonetheless an amazing, visually exhilarating, action-packed feast. And, though in comic-book fashion, it does answer (though unsatisfying so) the questions of how Luke, Leia, and Darth all came to be whom they eventually came to be.
Despite its flaws, it's great to see the "Star Wars universe", even in this crippled form, back in action. Suspend your level of disbelief, ignore Christensen, pretend that young Darth really was just a teenage-putz who got lucky (in a dark sort of way), imagine that when Luke, in Empire, learns that Vader is his father and cries out "Noooo!", he's really crying out "Nooo! I can't believe my father could possibly be such a dufus!", and you'll enjoy the adventure.