afterthoughts to ROTS...

Rating: 7/10 (2 November 2005)

I have read hundreds of comments after impulsively posting mine on the week that this film was first released, and they were all good, bad, and ugly. But mostly good and ugly for the record. Being that I have been a fan since seeing the original at the golden, impressionable age of six, I worshipped the original trilogy and watched the first two cringing with inner trepidation. And despite of their flaws (and God were there SO many), I still secretly enjoyed "The Phantom Menace" and "Attack of the Clones". And going to that theatre with the same trepidation/defense-mechanism that I had developed since 1999, I was expecting the worst. Many elements that destroyed the magic that the OT brought us and the PT raped us of were still present: the wooden acting and 5th-grade dialogue; the overuse of CGI; the protracting exposition. Although Ewan McGregor always had command of his role as Obi Wan Kenobi and was always able to deliver the most ridiculous of lines with such panache in these films. He has always made these films watchable (Liam Neeson wasn't that bad either in "Episode I"). Ewan's uncanny Alec Guinness-like presence makes one think that they tweeked archived footage from "The Bridge Over River Kwai" at times and used that instead.
To begin with, this story knows what to do with itself instead of showing us stupid battles between Gungans and the Trade Federation. The camaraderie between Anakin and Obi-Wan is solid-- I think that Hayden Christiansen took an acting lesson (but only one) in between films. But I sat slumped in my chair in the darkened movie theatre expecting it to get worse after the crash landing sequence and the stupid cutesy voices to the robots, so that defense-mechanism was going. It didn't though, and I wasn't laughing out loud with the "love" scenes between Anakin and Padme as I did in "AOTC" three years ago. Hayden Christiansen delivered some absurd lines and doesn't possess the gift that McGregor and Natalie Portman have (see above), but in this one he wasn't all that bad. I thought that the dialogue was a tad better (but not MUCH), and I was glad that they cut the scenes short instead. It helped make the scenes "passable". "Star Wars"'s dialogue always struck me as European-sounding at times,(until Lucas inserted American colloquialisms and syntex into the new trilogy now- like "yippee" from Episode I).
So the first hour was very humdrum with the usual technical babble and events that were still alien and distant to us didn't seem to be the "Star Wars" that we know and love. But then Palpatine delivers a speech about the "Legend of Darth Palegeus" as if it were a creepy bedtime story to Anakin at the opera house. My interest started to rise, and the circulation was pumping again. By the scene where Padme and Anakin are looking toward each other in opposite buildings at sunset, the haunting music started to set the tone for how the film was going to turn out to be.
As Anakin helps Palpatine defeat senior Jedi Mace Windu (Samuel L.Jackson) in hopes that he will learn how to save his wife Padme (Natalie Portman) from dying, he pledges allegiance to him and is christened as Darth Vader. From there, Vader goes on a killing spree as ordered, and the Republic's troops turn on the other Jedi advisors at the same time in a montage of systematic slaughter, a subtle homage to "The Godfather". And of course, it wouldn't be a "Star Wars" film without John Williams's score to raise the dramatic stakes...And guess what? IT DID! For the first time since I saw "Return of the Jedi" back in 1983, George Lucas was able to grab his audience emotionally and hold them there for at least the next hour. The magic was coming back, but unfortunately it didn't last as long as it did back in the Original Trilogy.
The movie comes to a climax, and the catharsis is predictable yet some of the events aren't as much. Probably the most emotional scene to watch is near the end where Natalie Portman goes to find Anakin and sees that Obi-Wan's conclusions are correct, and Anakin has succumbed to the Dark Side of the Force. It's so dramatic to me because I found myself watching this, with flashes of memories and traces of these same characters from "Episode's I & II", and what these three had been through together...And where they were now. Almost like the demise of three has-been child sitcom-actors. When she delivers her line, "you're breaking my heart", it was on the Velveeta-side, but she was able to say it as if it were the Gospel. And when Anakin Force-chokes Padme, it was domestic violence "Star Wars"-style. So it was very easy for me to root for Obi-Wan and hate Anakin even more.
So after Anakin is defeated and loses his extremities, the aftermath montage was equally poignant, and Darth Vader's first breath under the mask is so chilling. Every time I saw that in the theatre, NO ONE talked. And Padme's funeral is so haunting.
So one out of three isn't all that bad, but I wish that George Lucas hit the skin off the ball with this one. It bridges with Episode IV rather eloquently, and as other posters have stated that you will never watch the Original Trilogy the same way again. Well, that's true. Perhaps that is just something that distinguishes those sets of films making them classics and these not.