Sith is an anagram of...

Rating: 2/10 (14 July 2005)

Well, at least it's slightly less awful than the previous two films, but that doesn't make it good. Many seem to think that Sith somehow finally delivers a "real" Star Wars movie - to me it's pretty much just more of the same. The plot sets out to explain the rise of Darth Vader and the evil empire, but the three prequels barely amounts to one film of actual new and/or valuable information.
The emperor's plan for taking over the universe and defeating the Jedi order seems a tad complicated, especially since the build up for the coup has been taking place for many, many years (mostly off screen) only to be carried out more or less by just saying to the senate: "I think it's for the the best that I assume power of your planets." (cue thunderous applauds)...
Anakin's transformation into Vader is also completely wasted. He spends two films going around bitching and moaning, throwing in the odd subtle remark about how "democracy maybe isn't always a good thing". In Sith he changes sides in every new scene, of course there's no doubt as to which way he'll swing so the reason becomes all the more important. Unfortunately, it all comes down to his desire to possibly one day be able to save the life of his not-yet-dead girlfriend. It's just hard for me to see that he would turn into a cold hearted killer just because he's had some visions of his beloved (some actual chemistry between Christensen and Portman would have helped here) Padme, here reduced to retarded crying girl. Sorry, I just don't buy it.
You can defend these films by claiming that they're made for kids, but... the first three films seemed to have worked for kids and adults alike, so why change that? The prequels have been lacking soul. They just keep throwing in stuff and characters from the old films for no other reason than that they were present in those (Anakin built C-3PO, why?). Moreover, it feels like a completely different universe; Jedis can do vertical jumps and drops like they're weightless, R2-D2 could barely roll forward in the earlier films - now he's flying and jumping around - of course, they conveniently erase the robots' memories (read, lazy writing) so maybe he forgot he could do all those films. This may seem like nitpicking, but there are so many lame things like this that I can't help focusing on them instead of the (albeit virtually non-existent) plot.
Sure, there are more explosions and laser fights, but it lacks any sense of emotional involvement. Take the bad guys for example: the new films have them dropping in from time to time, but Maul, Dooku, and Grievous are just there - they don't have any back story and they're not very menacing either. They have been reduced to their light sabers - Maul had a double, Dooku's handle was bendable, and Grievous had four. Wow! Now that's some impressive character development... I mean FOUR light sabers! Genius... (sigh).
I dare say that the new films have all been about showing off new visual effects that can make everything bigger and move faster. One of the truly few good things about Sith is that the effects actually look ten times better than they did in the two other prequels. Of course, they still can't hide the fact that the actors are just standing in front of a blank screen trying to interact with stuff that isn't there (like a decent script). The acting is downright bad, with the exception of McDiarmid who's quite good up until the point where he makes up for the restraint he's shown for two and a half films and start screaming and cackling like crazy... It's easy to blame the script or direction, but they don't even seem to care about their performance, which makes me equally uninterested.
Sith actually has the only moment of these three most recent films that had some emotional impact on me. The literal backstabbing of the Jedi isn't exactly handled expertly, but it works. Ultimately, the prequel trilogy has a few possibly interesting themes to deal with, but Lucas seems unable to dig deeper into the mythology of his universe and settles for big booms and bright colours. And honestly, when talk first started about a trilogy of Darth Vader's birth, did you expect him to have a combined screen time of about two minutes? Like the Matrix sequels, episodes 1-3 is best forgotten as they actually manage to tarnish their originals. [2/10]