Welcome Back Mr Lucas

Rating: 9/10 (3 June 2005)

As the Star Wars movie franchise comes to an end (perhaps), George Lucas has made a prequel worthy of comparison with Empire and the original Star Wars. Although darker and more brooding than any of the other movies, the M rating being well deserved, Lucas has scored again, finally, with the fast paced, action packed, character driven story, laced with traces of humour that made the original trilogy classic.
For the first time in the prequel trilogy, the acting catches up with the splendour of the special effects - Ewan McGregor as Obi Wan Kenobi is clearly enjoying the thought of ageing into Alec Guiness, with a smirk and swagger through most of the movie; Natalie Portman turns in her best performance as Queen/Senator Amidala, a woman of few words but emotes hugely through body language; but truthfully, this is Hayden Christensen's movie.
As Anakin Skywalker, Christensen has moved on from the gee whiz cutesy kid in Phantom, from the petulant padawan in Clones, to a fully developed, confident in his own skill young man, torn between his loyalties to the Chancellor, the Jedi, and his wife. Every battling emotion is etched onto Anakin's face through the course of the movie, and, although fanboys are sure to enjoy the moment where Anakin gets the uniform, putting on the black seemed almost an anticlimax to this reviewer. Far more effective and rewarding was the internal mask that came up while the Emperor's coup took place, encompassing mindless slaughter.
The way the three leads interact brings to mind the apparent ease Hamill, Fisher and Ford had around each other in the originals. Also enjoyable to watch are Ian McDiarmand as Palpatine, Samuel L Jackson as Mace Windu, Christopher Lee in an all too brief Dooku, and even Jimmy Smits as a rebellious thinking Senator.
Less entertaining was the continued scrambled syntax of Yoda, five movies enough we have had - and yes, he can bounce around in light saber battles, but really, it was more fun when he was a puppet, surely? Another device that fell flat was the fact Revenge had more planets shown than all the other movies put together, when those extra planets include either twenty second vignettes of where the Jedi were when ambushed, or a ten minute excuse for Yoda to name drop Chewbacca, surely Lucas could have edited with a surer hand.
But these are minor gripes to a movie which, although ending the series in the middle, reignites the taste for Star Wars in a way that Phantom and Clones couldn't possibly hope for. The last five minutes will easily segue into the original movie either twenty years into the future (in the movie timeline) or twenty eight years in the past (in real time). A long long time ago indeed.
Multiple viewings will not be discouraged for this one.