The Captain Should be Relieved

Rating: 3/10 (6 June 2005)

"Revenge of the Sith". As a movie, It is hardly better than "Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow". And as the final jig-saw piece in the Mammoth Six Part Star Wars Epic, its terribly disappointing.
Actors reduced to mannequins, Swiss cheese plot, gastropodic pacing and A-D-D action. And it looks great. It comes off as nothing more than a giant video-game commercial.
Were there any two scenes which worked with each other? Where the story flowed between them? I got a sense I was watching a big plug-n-play kit-bash of a movie, purposely designed so that any scene could follow any other, allowing the director to wait until the last possible moment to make up his mind. Now we see the dangers of procrastination.
When "Revenge of the Sith" was finally put together in the screening room, and Lucas watched it from beginning to end, how could he not see how bad it was? Even if all his skills as a movie director have deserted him, surely his eyes did not deceive. He could have made it right, but he didn't. He could have pushed back the release date by six months, or a year! Get Natalie on the phone! We're going to re-shoot! But he didn't. Because a great big god-forsaken freight train of cross promotion and merchandising was already in motion. If the MOVIE was the important thing, all that could have waited. But the movie was not the important thing. Not even for him.
So, there are good points: Ian MacDiarmid is oily, slimy, hammy! He is winking at us, and he is having fun. The opera scene Amazing. Ewan McGregor is having fun, too. Most of the monsters manage to emote convincingly, in particular General Grievous and Yoda. Animators and voice actors take a bow!
Spectacular visuals, but lacking focus or, ahem, direction. Even so, two images stand out: Grievous with the sabers, and, Anakin floating towards us on a river of lava. The music is swelling, and just for that moment I can feel the intense emotion. It almost makes up for.
The bad: I don't buy it. The most pivotal, supposedly emotionally charged moment in the movie, and the whole trilogy for that matter, simply does not work. It does not work because it makes no sense emotionally or logically.
It does not work because in the six hours of previous Star Wars prequel movie Lucas is unable to convince us that this boy ever had any soul. He is either a small spoiled brat, or a (not tall enough) teen spoiled brat who somehow jedi-mind-tricks an otherwise intelligent Senator from Naboo into marrying him.
It does not work because there is no chemistry. I can not feel he has any affection for Padme of Naboo. (His reaction to her "wonderful news" is that of someone who only wants the sex. )
It does not work because the events immediately afterward at the Jedi Temple shout to us that what we just witnessed was a complete and total conversion from good to evil. Anakin's conversion is tepid at best.
It does not work because Anakin Skywalker has no wit, no friends, no love, no depth. (And this is not Hayden Christiansen's fault.) He is just a brat with no soul.
And, of course, NNNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO. Horrible horrible. Ruined the climax. 'Nuff said.
I had lowered expectations. But not low enough. Hope springs eternal for those of us who saw the originals. Hope that maybe just maybe I'll get that feeling of limitless horizons, that feeling that "a long time ago" this really did happen, all of it. Robots with attitude, princesses in danger, and all the baggage of this world is lifted off our shoulders and cast far away.
All the pieces were there, but they didn't come together. George Lucas hasn't been to Tatooine in a very long time. He's been hiding on the Ranch. And it shows.
"The Phantom Menace" and "Attack of the Clones" took us somewhere new, although it all seemed so reminiscent of suburbia and Disneyland in tone. There were danger signs: Anakin invents Threepio? But Episode 3 has managed to collapse the limitless Star Wars universe. If we are to believe these movies, the entire far off galaxy contains only about a dozen significant bipedal creatures. And they all forget about each other whenever necessary. Such sloppiness is detailed in other reviews. And there really is no excuse.
And at the same time there is such an effort to tie up all the fanboy loose ends. Why? Memories of the "Midichlorian" explanation in Ep. 1. Things explained that don't need to be. Who cares whether we see CaptainAntilles or the Rebel BlockadeRunner? What are the Wookies doing? Are they here so that we can see them all get killed? I guess Lucas figures a movie is "dark" when lots of people die or have their limbs removed. Our heroine Padme dies too, for reasons that once again make no sense emotionally or logically. Why not have her live? Why not leave her destiny unexplained? There's no reason. I pity the Star Wars virgins who are trying to watch this saga from beginning to end for the very first time. Eps 4-6 will now be completely surprise free! Have fun kids. Oh, silly me, Lucas will probably alter Eps 4-6 again when he makes them 3D.
After seeing ROTS, even with my lowered expectations, I was let down. Nine years of all-out creative effort had given us three unexceptional science fiction movies. Movies that, while bad in their own right, also managed to sully three other movies which I liked so much. And when I left the theater, I couldn't even go watch the originals because now "Greedo shoots first". All hope was gone.
So why did I see it again? Maybe only George Lucas knows that one.