Lucas missing the mark, and managing to prove himself a shallow and overblown 'artist.'

Rating: 4/10 (19 May 2005)

Although I disliked Christensen's performance as well, and for that matter the entirety of the acting portions of the movie, I think there is far more wrong with Revenge of the Sith than simply a B-level heartthrob's poorly directed performance. The directing in its encompassing touch on the film could be to blame. This will not be only an assault on Mr. Lucas's credibility and integrity as an artist, but I must work to highlight the good parts of this as a film, the best of the prequels (although that is not to say much).
In Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones, there was a layer of crusted, old, worn-out, and unnecessary cheese caked on in a rather thick amount, with C-3PO's head being dragged in an unrealistic slapstick setup then coming to utter the line, "what a drag," and have vanish with it the last bit of salvageable respect I could possibly have for the jiggly-necked Lucas and his work. I had thought the value of the first three films, as they were originally released and received by the world, could not be insulted to a greater degree than what Jar Jar Binks did for the legacy of an American classic. Even though my viewing of this film happened in a packed theater with the movie-going sheep hooting and clapping at the slightest bit of physical comedy (and I dare say unfunny comedy at best) brought to a scene, I did find there to be a lack of such situations past the first fifteen minutes of screen time. The cattle I had the pleasure of viewing the film with would even laugh and applaud at moments when there wasn't a deliberate move by Lucas to drum a rise from the mass crowd. Yet, despite collective humanity's greatest attempts to ruin by annoyance the 'pleasure' of seeing this film for the first time, there was nowhere near as much of the outright crap within this feature.
To find the real crap, you have to look deeper. Maybe only a few inches deeper, but elements of character attributes, metaphors, double-entendres, overlying themes, and true and passionately motivated characters are absent from this film, leaving little in the way of layers through which to dig.
However, there is the use of political unrest modeled after relevant scenarios that seems to strike a contemporary meaningful note. The setup being built based on the circumstances of the Vietnam War, yet ringing true with importance to today (demonstrating how history perhaps repeats itself...who'da thunkit). This one bit of significance cannot be used to establish credit for Lucas, for he employed it with little detail or methods of reflection, and all of the inspired thoughts one can have weighing Palpatine's line, "we will destroy the Jedi, and then we will have peace," are more so attributable to the reality of the application of that line today and not to the use within the film.
Perhaps Lucas's greatest failing did revolve around Christensen, though. As I sit and ponder the spectacle I have just witnessed (I'm writing this at 3am on return from seeing the film) I find myself realizing that the depths Anakin reaches so quickly came from no motivation other than the obligatory plot line created within A New Hope. The changes that the characters in Revenge of the Sith find themselves going through seem to come from the same necessity, and nothing else. Anakin sways to the dark side to learn the power to save Padme, and then quickly moves to taking a sadistic pleasure in slaughtering children? It doesn't work. And that about says it for this film. For me, there will always be an entirely dis-interesting quality possessed by works of art that exhibit a complete lack of ambiguity. Beyond that, Revenge of the Sith seemed to be a dying whimper of creativity that marks (perhaps most importantly) the end of Lucas's obligation to us, the viewing public, to finish his behemoth of a project that all started with a passion, a vision, and a Joseph Campbell novel. If there is anything that this film accomplished, then it is that and nothing more.