A partial return to form for Lucas

Rating: 4/10 (6 May 2005)

It looks great. It sounds great. It's actually got a story this time. It knits together the original and the new trilogy rather well. And yes, it's actually a pretty good movie. Nowhere near A New Hope or The Empire Strikes Back, but on par with Return of the Jedi.
But it's got Hayden Christensen, who almost manages to ruin the movie entirely. It's also got non-existent character direction by Lucas and the usually competent Ewan McGregor spouting some rather silly lines. It's got its fair share of tooth-grindingly bad daytime soap opera dialogue, delivered without passion or soul.
Still, I was thoroughly entertained, despite its glaring faults.
Oh, the eye candy! My hat's off to the folks at ILM, as they've outdone themselves and pretty much every other FX-company in the world. Huge space battles right from the start, numerous alien vistas and environments - every one of them believable, living and breathing with various forms of life, so breathtakingly real I felt like I could step into the screen.
But for every little thing Lucas manages to get right, there's Christensen to foul something else up. His delivery is wooden and amateurish, as the passion and rage called for by the script are nowhere to be found inside this young actor. Portman is not much better. McDiarmid gets the best part to play (baddies are always fun, right?) and does it with gusto. Jackson is convincing as Mace Windu, and Jackson gets his wish regarding Windu's fate.
The crux of the entire story is Anakin's turning over to the Dark Side of the Force. Did I find the causes for this believable? Unfortunately, I did not. This point in the story and the carnage following it left me struggling, forcing myself to believe that this tragic young man would choose the Dark Side because of the things I had previously witnessed. There was also little to no reason given for the horrendous things Anakin did right after crossing over. This is by far my biggest problem with the movie; it stumbles at this, the most important hurdle.
If you believe the reasons for Anakin's decision, you're in for a treat, as the rest of the movie is one heck of a roller-coaster. It's also quite brutal and at times beautiful, even touching, thanks to a brilliant musical score which makes much more of an impression as it did in the previous two movies.
Knitting together the two trilogies is managed by several little touches. You can see the spaceships' design moving towards the ships seen in Episode IV - TIE fighters are seen in their early stage, as are X-Wings and some other vehicles. In one scene, Padme is wearing familiar buns on her head. We meet Chewbacca, along with a huge bunch of other Wookies. The explanation for why C3PO is unable to recognize his former master is half-baked, though. And, naturally, there's Leia and Luke. The final shot had me in tears.
Episode III is the only movie of the new trilogy I actually want to see again.