Exciting, but flawed finale.

Rating: 7/10 (14 May 2005)

REVENGE OF THE SITH (Warning! Spoilers included) I saw Revenge of the Sith yesterday and actually enjoyed it. I even enjoyed it quite a lot. I doubt that I'll ever be as taken with a movie as I was by a New Hope and pity all those who didn't get the effect of the Imperial Star Destroyer as an introduction to what cinema is capable of.
There's a lot of really good stuff in RotS. We finally get to see a proper space battle where the capital ships do something other than just float in space. Full-on broadsides,gun-decks, explosive decompression,fighters firing at the big ships having no effect and getting t****ed for their insolence. All the stuff that should have been in the Battle of Endor but wasn't. I mean an A-Wing taking out a super Star Destroyer? Puhlease!
Don't listen to the reviews that dismiss Hayden Christensen & Natalie Portman's performances. They are well measured and delivered and it's not their fault George writes such clunky dialogue. Obi-Wan & Anakin's banter is much more natural than before and goes some way towards restoring the humour bypass Episodes 1&2 suffered. Ian McDiarmid is superb as the Emperor. I've had the good fortune to see him on stage and was thrilled to see him finally get the chance to show some of that talent in a Star Wars movie. I wonder how many people will connect that he made Anakin? The whole 'virgin birth' thing that got ignored in Episode 1 having its resolution in a way that even Anakin doesn't seem to recognise.
There are problems with it, but they're mostly pretty minor. At the end 3PO gets a memory wipe to protect the twins'identity and where they've been sent, but Artoo doesn't. Why? Can't the sith get something to translate an astromech's beeps? There are a lot of the usual crap physics screw-ups. During the aforementioned space battle, the ship our heroes are on rescuing Palpatine gets damaged and pitches forward. Everyone and everything on the ship fall forward, staying that way until the ship is levelled off again. Why's this a problem? The ships have artificial gravity. This will mean that it doesn't matter which way the ship orients itself the floor will always be down. Oh, and if you're standing still and someone sprays oil over your feet you do not immediately begin to slide around like a bad slapstick routine.
Anakin has a bit of a problem when Palpatine orders him to execute Count Dooku, but accepts it, does it and  despite a wee whinge about it not being the Jedi code  says no more about it and is not angry with Palpatine for giving the order. Later, when asked by Obi-Wan & the council to spy on Palpatine, he completely goes off on one because, yes, it's against the Jedi code. This is a big part of his motivation for going to the dark side. Added to his odd conviction that Padme is going to die in childbirth and somehow decides that the dark side can save her. Even when he doesn't get the information from the Emperor, he doesn't get angry with him.
That brings me to my biggest problem with it. When Padme has given birth she just dies for no apparent reason. She doesn't have a difficult birth, she hasn't suffered a lot of damage from Anakin's force-choke and the medics even say there's nothing physically wrong with her. She just loses the will to live. When she dies there is no effort made to revive her, not even by Obi-Wan who we saw trying to save her in Anakin's vision of her death. Hardly the strong, independent woman she's been shown as up until now. Her husband turned evil and died so she just drops dead? Come on, George. More damage from the force-choke and she wills herself to live to see her children born, yes. She just abandons them? No. Remember Luke & Leia's conversation about their mother in Jedi? Leia remembers her mother, which gives the impression that she went into hiding with her. That makes things even better. Padme goes into hiding, damaged by the force choke, perhaps, but never really gets over Anakin's betrayal and dies young. But no, we have to have the entire plot resolved. No loose threads because it seems we're too thick to figure out something like that happening between Episodes 3 & 4. Given that there's to be a TV show set in that period it could have been resolved there. Character development has never been a forte of Mr Lucas'.
Speaking of changing things previously established might I quote Yoda? "A Jedi uses the force for knowledge and defence. Never for attack." All the Jedi use the force to throw things at opponents, knock them off high places & smash them into walls.
There's far too much reliance on CGI some of it quite poorly done. The wookies are repeated very obviously in their big appearance (The whole wookie thread is a waste of time, by the way.) and things are done just because they can be not because they advance the plot or make things better. There's a dreadful shot on Coruscant where the characters seem to glide above the surface they're walking on. I know, I know; I'm sounding negative. Put it this way, though: this time I care enough to talk about it. The last two weren't worth the effort.