Fantastic

Rating: 10/10 (22 May 2005)

I'm not going to bore you with what Star Wars has meant to me and all that bull*t. The fact is that the first two episodes in the prequels have been lack luster attempts, almost as if, with each one Lucas was feeling his way, trying to regain his footing. TPM played a lot like a Star Wars text book with some cool actions scenes. While it was enjoyable (how could ANY Star Wars movie not be enjoyable) it just seemed like characters were introduced and thrown away for no particular reason. AOTC was better but still lacked some of the elements that would have made it a classic. Anankin was too whiny and too much like a petulant teenager to every really warm up to and Padme (Natalie Portman) was so bad acting wise she jump roped from amazingly wooden to overacting one on one. This is what the other movies should have been.
Lucas is able to make you feel for the characters and, despite poor dialog and stillsome shoddy acting, create connections between characters you begin to care about. The action is incredible and the technology has come so far that now, even the CGI characters are looking real. The details on Yoda and General Grevious are amazing and you forget, from time to time, that they are CGI. I loved this movie, if only because it may, in fact, resemble a movie more than any of the others. Each SW movie has been a swashbuckling tale that hinges around action, adventure, and light, comedic moments. You care about the characters but you never truly believe that they are in any real danger. ROTS is completely different. Not only do you believe the characters are in danger, you know they are and that there is no turning back. No matter what, you know that Padme is going to die, you know that Yoda is going to lose in his struggle with the Emperor, you know that Obi Wan and Yoda and the others will be forced into seclusion and you know, beyond a doubt, that Anakin will become Darth Vader. Perhaps that is the shocking part of ROTS. Most SW fans absolutely love Darth Vader. As a kid, I actually wanted him to beat Luke every time in ROTJ. It never even occurred to me that Vader could be beaten. But in this movie, you DON'T want Anakin to become Vader. You feel true remorse for the young Jedi, so afraid to lose the ones he loves, so twisted by the lies of the Emperor and so hell bent on being the greatest Jedi ever that he abandons all that is good in him to become Vader. Even the moment in the end when the mask is finally put on and Vader as we know him comes to life, even that feels hollow. One of the reasons why is because Lucas does a wonderful job of connecting Obi Wan and Anakin together in this film. You can feel and see the love they have for one another and the older/younger brother relationship they have developed. This is the relationship Lucas should have established for us in AOTC. There, the two Jedi seemed to have an extremely combative relationship where you could easily see the eventual battle coming. In ROTS, that relationship seems so genuine it hurts when it crumbles away to nothing. I would have liked more than half a movie to see that relationship blossom. Maybe then having ripped away, as it most assuredly had to be, wouldn't have seemed so quick. Also, in ROTS, you see, for the first time, characters or righteousness killed by the power and force of the Dark Side. Even the death of Qui Gon in TPM didn't seem as disturbing as the destruction of Mace Windu and the execution of the Jedi in this one. This is a very dark movie, but one of the beauties of it remains the way it subways into the original trilogy. Seeing Leia taken to Alderon and, at the end, seeing Luke, cradled by his aunt, looking over the Tatooine horizon as John William's classic score booms in the background is breathtaking. Some may say that this SW redeems the other two but I say it actually leaves you wanting more from the other two. It almost seems as if Lucas really didn't feel comfortable with this back story until ROTS. I would like to see him go back an re-do the other two movies. I would like to see him develop the emotions between characters in those movies the way he did in this one. I would have liked the rest of this trilogy to have been as engaging as this one was. Are there problems? Sure. The middle is a little long winded, Anakin's turning to the Dark Side seems a little rushed and quick. It seems a little strange that a boy so committed to the Jedi way and the Republic would turn so quickly. There are consistency problems as well, ones that only the most SW geekish amongst us would notice. In ROTJ Leia speaks of remembering her mother when she was very little. But Padme dies in child birth, so how could that be. R2-D2 knows Obi Wan very well and goes on each adventure with him and Anakin during the trilogy, yet in ANH R2 looks scared of Obi Wan who, in turn, does not seem to remember the little droid. Also, the fact that Yoda cannot see that Palpatine is the Sith Lord always seemed to me to be strange. But these are small, and no one should let any of that interfere with the movie. Th Revenge of the Sith may, in fact, be the best of the six. The original trilogy still holds a very special place in my heart, but one would be hard pressed to show that Lucas has ever done any better by his 6 part masterpiece.